In this article, particle image velocimetry was used to measure the two-dimensional flow field for vortex gripper. The vortex gripper was divided into two parts for respective research, including vortex cup and the gas film gap. In the part of vortex cup, the tangential velocity increases gradually, and the velocity decreases intensely in the vicinity of the vortex cup’s wall after it reaches maximum. In addition, the velocity decreases gradually with the increase of the gas film gap. In the part of gas film gap, the tangential velocity increases to maximum along the radial direction first; after the air flows into the gas film gap due to the viscous impedance, it decreases gradually. When the gas film gap’s thickness is smaller, the velocity almost decreases to zero at the external edge of the skirt. However, when the gas film gap increases to a certain thickness, the velocity does not decrease to zero, and the flow air still keeps a certain speed out of it. The velocity decreases gradually with the increase of the gas film gap. The radial velocity in the vortex cup and the gas film gap is of very small order of magnitude comparing with the average velocity and tangential velocity. The analysis of the Reynolds number shows that the flow in the vortex cup is the turbulent flow, and at the part of the gas film gap, the Reynolds number increases with the increase of the gas film gap, and the flow changes from the laminar flow to the turbulent flow. Through the particle image velocimetry experiment, the vortex gripper’s internal flow structure is studied. It is the theory support of the computational fluid dynamics simulation study for vortex gripper and the structure optimization in the future work.