Development of Hand Skeleton with Jamming Transition for Improved Object Grasp Retention Force and Stable Leader�Follower Teleoperation Grasping in Soft Robotic Hand

In this paper, we present a soft robotic hand structure capable of enhancing object grasp retention force and achieving stable object grasping under teleoperation without haptic feedback. The soft robotic hand consists of a hand skeleton equipped with a soft glove device actuated by extra-thin McKibben artificial muscles. In this paper, a particle layer was integrated into the hand skeleton, and the jamming transition was implemented by applying a vacuum to this particle layer. The jamming transition increases the driving force required to actuate the fingers of the hand skeleton, thereby improving the object grasp retention force of the soft robotic hand. Finally, as a demonstration, teleoperation was performed using leader–follower control without haptic feedback. The results show that activating the jamming transition after grasping an object enables the hand to maintain a stable grasp regardless of the leader’s posture.