Universal Robotic End Effector Design and Granular Material Selection for FANUC Collaborative Robot Implementation

The objective of this research was to create a universal robotic end effector also known as a jamming gripper and test the effectiveness of coffee grounds vs. kinetic sand as the granular material used in the end effector. The apparatus used was a system containing an Arduino UNO, a 12-volt vacuum pump, an h-bridge, a solenoid valve, and the jamming gripper itself. An assortment of objects was used to see how well the gripper could pick up objects of different sizes, shapes, and weights. After various trials, the coffee grounds yielded much better results than the kinetic sand. The kinetic sand adhered too strongly to itself and lacked the soft-to-hard phase transition that the coffee grounds possess. This phase transition allows the coffee grounds to conform to an object and grip onto it when necessary while also separating adequately when the object needs to be released. The eventual goal is to create a fully autonomous universal robotic end effector and collaborative robot system that can pick up and place delicate and uniquely shaped objects.