[This ones for my nephew]
Tristan,
Here are some examples of the robotic jamming actuators I was talking about. The actuator is a ballon filled with coffee grounds. Then when they pull all the air out of the ballon, it squeezes the granules of coffee together, and it becomes solid. The actuator works by pushing it up against an object to pick up while it is soft. Then drawing out the air to harden the actuator. This traps that part letting you pick the part up.
Here is a home build version that uses a syringe, a ballon, a funnel and some tubing to make the actuator. The syringe is used to pull out the air.
This is another home build jamming actuator, but instead of a syringe they use a home vacuum to draw out the air.
It would be a lot of work, but you could build a robotic arm sort of like this one, but with a jamming actuator as opposed to the gripper you can see in the video. If you liked this idea, if you drew up plans I can print them for you.
If you like the arms, but don’t like the jamming actuators check this out. These guys made arms from syringes and popsicle sticks, then had them fight in a robot arm sumo matches!
More details on these arms here: Hydrolic-JudoBots
If we designed a version of this type of arm to be printed, I could make you enough parst for two arms. Then you could wrestle them with your friends.