I have greatly enjoyed sucking the air out of plastic bags filled with all sorts of materials... This "jamming" effect has been used in all sorts of applications, and it's the second robotic application I've seen. This is great... I only wish I had thought of it first... in my experience I would try a less constrictive outer casing.. thin plastic produce bags work better than you would expect.
Polyethylene bags would be too slick. Even with the conforming shape and rigidity from the vacuum, the glass of water shown in one of the photos would have slipped out of the grip. Latex is a much "stickier" surface.
This distributes the forces just as evenly as a beanbag distributes your butt force. I needed a tool that evenly distributed forces when applied to muscles and a tiny beanbag in front of plates that roughly approximate the surface is what I came up with.
This could be very useful for relatively low-cost prosthetics. All you need from the user is an arm to mount it on and the ability to control vacuum on and off.
