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A 0.5-meter-scale, high-load, soft-enclosed gripper capable of grasping the human body

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Abstract

Developing large, soft grippers with high omnidirectional load (above 40 kg) has always been challenging. We address this challenge by developing a powerful soft gripper that can grasp the human body based on a soft-enclosed grasping structure and a soft-rigid coupling structure. The envelope size of the proposed soft gripper is 611.6 mm × 559 mm × 490.7 mm, the maximum grasping size is 417 mm, and the payload on the human body is more than 90 kg, which has exceeded most existing soft grippers. Furthermore, the grasping force prediction of the gripper is achieved through theoretical modeling. The primary contribution of this work is to overcome the size and payload limits of current soft grippers and implement a human-grasping experiment based on the soft-grasping method.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Part Rolling Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics, Ningbo University, Ningbo, 315211, China

    HaiLi Li

  2. Parallel Robot and Mechatronic System Laboratory of Hebei Province, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China

    Shuai Zhang, XuanHao Zhang, WuMian Zhao & JianTao Yao

Authors
  1. HaiLi Li
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  2. Shuai Zhang
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  3. XuanHao Zhang
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  4. WuMian Zhao
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  5. JianTao Yao
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to JianTao Yao.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51975505), the Ningbo Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2022J134), and the Open Research Project of the State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Zhejiang University, China (Grant No. ICT 2022B14).

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The supporting information is available online at https://tech.scichina.com and https://link.springer.com. The supporting materials are published as submitted, without typesetting or editing. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and content remains entirely with the authors.

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Li, H., Zhang, S., Zhang, X. et al. A 0.5-meter-scale, high-load, soft-enclosed gripper capable of grasping the human body. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 66, 501–511 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-022-2277-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-022-2277-x

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