Abstract
Robotic grippers that gently handle objects of various shapes are required for various applications these days. Conventional finger-shaped grippers are multifunctional and can grip various objects; however, grasping an item without slippage requires planning the positioning of the fingers at appropriate locations on the item. Hence, a ring-shaped soft gripper that coils itself around objects like a rubber band is suggested in this paper. The proposed gripper comprises a soft tube containing laminated sponges interleaved with plastic sheets. Evacuation of the air within the sponges shrinks them and decreases the diameter of the ring, thereby allowing the gripper to firmly hold objects. The gripper is therefore flexible enough to coil around objects of various shapes without gaps. Furthermore, the rigidity of the compressed sponges inside the gripper prevents wobbling of the gripped objects. The air within the gripper can be used to adjust the gripping force. The minimum diameter of the gripper after evacuating the air within the sponges is approximately one-fourth of the original diameter. Thus, the proposed gripper is expected to be used in various applications as it automatically conforms to the different shapes while simply gripping objects gently and securely.
Highlights
Robotic grippers that can handle objects automatically without manual intervention or human assistance are essential for mechanization
Many grippers have been designed and developed with flexible fingers that can be bent by manipulating the internal air pressure [3,4,5,6]
The evacuation of air was stopped at − 3 kPa to ensure that the soft bread was not crushed when encircled without gaps. This result shows that the gripper can grasp a soft object whose cross section is not circular even though it requires control of the internal air pressure according to the contact condition
Summary
Robotic grippers that can handle objects automatically without manual intervention or human assistance are essential for mechanization. In the origami magic ball [16], an object is placed within a conical gripper and grasped by shrinking the cone via changes to the internal vacuum pressure; such grippers do not require precise control for grasping objects The former must be pressed against the object to be held, which is not suitable for fragile items, while the latter can only grasp objects with circular cross-sectional shapes. The length of the actuator varies with the internal vacuum pressure because the compressive force of the pressure and restoring force of the sponges determine the amount of shortening The internal vacuum pressure in the gripper can be used to adjust
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