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Rigid-Soft Coupled Robotic Gripper for Adaptable Grasping

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Abstract

Inspired by the morphology of human fingers, this paper proposes an underactuated rigid-soft coupled robotic gripper whose finger is designed as the combination of a rigid skeleton and a soft tissue. Different from the current grippers who have multi-point contact or line contact with the target objects, the proposed robotic gripper enables surface contact and leads to flexible grasping and robust holding. The actuated mechanism, which is the palm of proposed gripper, is optimized for excellent operability based on a mathematical model. Soft material selection and rigid skeleton structure of fingers are then analyzed through a series of dynamic simulations by RecurDyn and Adams. After above design process including topology analysis, actuated mechanism optimization, soft material selection and rigid skeleton analysis, the rigid-soft coupled robotic gripper is fabricated via 3D printing. Finally, the grasping and holding capabilities are validated by experiments testing the stiffness of a single finger and the impact resistance of the gripper. Experimental results show that the proposed rigid-soft coupled robotic gripper can adapt to objects with different properties (shape, size, weight and softness) and hold them steadily. It confirms the feasibility of the design procedure, as well as the compliant and dexterous grasping capabilities of proposed rigid-soft coupled gripper.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 52275027, 52275028 and 52205028, in part by the Tianjin Science and Technology Planning Project under Grant 20201193.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Mechanism Theory and Equipment Design of Ministry of Education, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300350, China

    Zhiyuan He, Binbin Lian & Yimin Song

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tianjin Renai College, Tianjin, 301636, China

    Yimin Song

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  1. Zhiyuan He
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  2. Binbin Lian
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He, Z., Lian, B. & Song, Y. Rigid-Soft Coupled Robotic Gripper for Adaptable Grasping. J Bionic Eng 20, 2601–2618 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42235-023-00405-2

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