Everything-Grasping Gripper: A Universal Gripper with Synergistic Suction–Grasping Capabilities for Cross-Scale and Cross-State Manipulation

Grasping objects across vastly different sizes and physical states-including both solids and liquids-with a single robotic gripper remain a fundamental challenge in soft robotics. We present the Everything-Grasping (EG) Gripper, a soft end-effector that synergistically integrates distributed surface suction with internal granular jamming, enabling cross-scale and cross-state manipulation without requiring airtight sealing at the contact interface with target objects. The EG Gripper can handle objects with surface areas ranging from submillimeter scale 0.2 mm² (glass bead) to over 62,000 mm² (A4-sized paper and woven bag), enabling manipulation of objects nearly 3500<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mo>×</mml:mo></mml:math> smaller and 88<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mo>×</mml:mo></mml:math> larger than its own contact area (approximated at 707 mm² for a 30 mm diameter base). We further introduce a tactile sensing framework that combines liquid detection and pressure-based suction feedback, enabling real-time differentiation between solid and liquid targets. Guided by the Tactile-Inferred Grasping Mode Selection algorithm, the gripper autonomously selects grasping modes based on distributed pressure and voltage signals. Experiments across diverse tasks-including underwater grasping, fragile object handling, and liquid capture-demonstrate robust and repeatable performance. To our knowledge, this is the first soft gripper to reliably grasp both solid and liquid objects across scales using a unified compliant architecture.