Transformable Soft Gripper: Uniting Grasping and Suction for Amphibious Cross-Scale Objects Grasping

Abstract

Robotic grasping plays a pivotal role in real-world interactions for robots. Existing grippers often limit functionality to a single grasping mode—picking or suction. While picking handles smaller objects and suction adapts to larger ones, integrating these modes breaks scale boundaries, expanding the robot’s potential in real applications. This article introduces grasping modes transformable soft gripper capable of achieving amphibious cross-scale objects grasping. Despite its compact and fully scalable design (20 mm in diameter prototype), it morphs into two configurations, gripping objects from 10% (2 mm) to over 1000% (200 mm) of its size, spanning a vast 100-fold range. To enhance its grasping efficacy, we derived theoretical analytical models for the two distinct grasping modes. Subsequently, we present a detailed illustration of the gripper’s fabrication process. Experimental validation demonstrates the gripper’s success in attaching or detaching everyday items and industrial products, achieving high success rates in both air and underwater scenarios. Amphibious grasping and card manipulation demonstrations underscore the practicality of this transformative soft robotics approach.