A high-load bioinspired soft gripper with force booster fingers

Abstract

• This paper proposes a high-load soft gripper with force booster fingers. • The gripper has a maximum grasping force of 1960 N, and can lift the human body. • This work provides a new design idea for the soft gripper that has a large payload. Significantly improving the load capacity of soft grippers while taking into account their flexibility is a challenge that must be addressed to promote their application in more fields. This work proposes a universal method to equip the tip of soft bending actuators with bioinspired force booster fingers to greatly increase the payload of multi-finger soft grippers. Theoretical modeling expresses the mechanical principle of the proposed soft gripper that can generate high load force, and the relationship between the pull-off force and the inflation pressure of the force booster fingers. Experiments show that the proposed soft gripper composed of four bending soft pneumatic actuators has a maximum grasping force of ∼1960 N, which is more than 17 times the existing level, and can lift the human body. This work provides a new design idea for the development of soft grippers that have a large payload, which is to equip the tip of soft bending actuators with contact or non-contact force booster devices.