Soft robotic grippers have numerous advantages that address challenges in
dynamic aerial grasping. Typical multi-fingered soft grippers recently
showcased for aerial grasping are highly dependent on the direction of the
target object for successful grasping. This study pushes the boundaries of
dynamic aerial grasping by developing an omnidirectional system for autonomous
aerial manipulation. In particular, the paper investigates the design,
fabrication, and experimental verification of a novel, highly integrated,
modular, sensor-rich, universal jamming gripper specifically designed for
aerial applications. Leveraging recent developments in particle jamming and
soft granular materials, the presented gripper produces a substantial holding
force while being very lightweight, energy-efficient and only requiring a low
activation force. We show that the holding force can be improved by up to 50%
by adding an additive to the membrane's silicone mixture. The experiments show
that our lightweight gripper can develop up to 15N of holding force with an
activation force as low as 2.5N, even without geometric interlocking. Finally,
a pick and release task is performed under real-world conditions by mounting
the gripper onto a multi-copter. The developed aerial grasping system features
many useful properties, such as resilience and robustness to collisions and the
inherent passive compliance which decouples the UAV from the environment.Comment: 21 pages, 19 figures; corrected affiliation