A Variable Stiffness Soft Robotic Hand Featuring Ball-Jointed Skeleton Coupled With Particles

Abstract Compared with a rigid robotic hand, the soft robotic hand has the advantages of strong safety and high adaptability, but it has problems such as insufficient grasping force, poor attitude retention ability, and poor dynamic stability. Therefore, it is of great significance to introduce a variable stiffness mechanism so that the soft robotic hand can flexibly change its stiffness under different task requirements, thus improving its grasping stability. An innovative design of a novel particle clogging variable stiffness soft robotic hand, featuring superior stiffness performance, is presented in this article, which incorporates a novel particle-clogging variable stiffness structure coupled with a ball-jointed skeleton and particles, resulting in a 29.4% stiffness enhancement over traditional designs lacking a ball-jointed skeleton, while boasting a 217.7% increase in single-finger fingertip force, and an elevation of embracing grasping performance by 110.56% along with a 280.2% improvement in fingertip grasp performance, thereby significantly improving grasping force, stability and effectiveness for daily food, and tool grasping.