Abstract
Pneumatic soft grippers have been widely studied. However, the structures and material properties of existing pneumatic soft grippers limit their load capacity and manipulation range. In this article, inspired by sea lampreys, we present a pneumatic novel combined soft gripper to achieve a high load capacity and a large grasping range. This soft gripper consists of a cylindrical soft actuator and a detachable sucker. Three internal air chambers of the cylindrical soft actuator are inflated, which enables them to hold objects. Under vacuum pressure, the cylindrical soft actuator and the detachable sucker can both adsorb objects. A finite element model was constructed to simulate three inflation chambers for predicting the grasping range of the cylindrical soft actuator. The validity of the finite element model was established by an experiment. The mechanism of holding force and adsorption force were analyzed. Several groups of experiments were conducted to determine adsorption range, holding force, and adsorption force. In addition, practical applications further indicated that the novel combined soft gripper has a high load capacity (10.85 kg) at a low pressure (16 kPa) and a large grasping range (minimum diameter of the object: d = 6 mm), being able to lift a variety of objects with different weights, material properties, and shapes.
Highlights
Soft robots have distinguishable potential and advantages compared to traditional rigid robots, such as flexibility, high environmental adaptability, shock-absorbing properties, and high degrees of freedom, and the application areas of soft robots have involved human–machine interaction, locomotion and exploration, manipulation, medical and surgical applications, rehabilitation, and wearable robots [1,2,3,4]
In this work, inspired by sea lampreys, wering-shaped propose a pneumatic novel combined soft. In that this iswork, inspired sea lampreys, we propose a pneumatic novelThe combined gripper composed of aby cylindrical soft actuator and a detachable sucker
The experiments and applications of grasping sorption objects with different weights, sizes and materials indicate that the novel comand adsorption objects weights, andgrasping materials indicate the comnovel bined soft gripper has a with high different load capacity andsizes a large range
Summary
Soft robots have distinguishable potential and advantages compared to traditional rigid robots, such as flexibility, high environmental adaptability, shock-absorbing properties, and high degrees of freedom, and the application areas of soft robots have involved human–machine interaction, locomotion and exploration, manipulation, medical and surgical applications, rehabilitation, and wearable robots [1,2,3,4]. Ring-shaped soft cause instability of stiffness in closed structure softradial grippers, which deformation limits the increase robotic grippers allow for grasping objects through shrinkage [39,40].in the load force gripper. The experiments and applications of grasping sorption objects with different weights, sizes and materials indicate that the novel comand adsorption objects weights, andgrasping materials indicate the comnovel bined soft gripper has a with high different load capacity andsizes a large range. Thisthat novel combined soft gripper has a high load capacity and a large grasping range. A finite element model and a series of experiments and applications are conducted to validate that the novel combined soft gripper has a high and applications are conducted to validate that the novel combined soft gripper has a high load capacity and a large grasping range.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
