As promised, I improved on my initial rather silly design of the universal gripper as inspired by iRobot and University of Chicago.

The DIY Jamming Gripper

The DIY Jamming Gripper

My main goal was to create a universal gripper that could be made from off-the shelves parts in a simple way with minimum customization.

Materials

  • A shower head (that you will need to modify slightly)
  • Some 1/4″ silicon tubing
  • Some cottons balls
  • A balloon
  • A DC pump
  • A DC wall adaptor
  • A switch
  • Some coffee
  • A coupling
  • A funnel to fill the balloon with coffee

DIY Jamming Gripper Materials

DIY Jamming Gripper Materials

Putting it together

I think I succeeded my goal as you will see below: the gripper is quite easy to assemble and only required very minor modification of the shower head in order to fit the balloon in.

The steps for putting the gripper together are outlined in the video below.

As shown in the video below the proper works pretty well. unfortunately, I did not film it but it can also hold a glass filled with water as the original.

See the picture gallery below for more details about the building steps and the final result.

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