Abstract
Abstract Soft robotic grippers have gained considerable attention owing to their highly compliant, adaptive, and safe characteristics in a large variety of scenes, especially involving human-machine interactions. However, the low-stiffness nature of the soft material and the multi-finger gripping mechanism make soft grasping systems suffer in applications requiring relatively high load capacity and broad grasping adaptability. Despite extensive efforts to develop soft grippers with tunable stiffness by constructing smart materials and structures, the resultant load capacity is often compromised by sacrificing working efficiency or surface adaptability. In this work, we report a paradigm to design a versatile, high-load (>2 kg), and fast-response (<1 s) pneumatic soft gripper by strengthening the contact interface via bio-inspired controllable adhesion. A mushroom-shaped micropatterned dry adhesive surface is integrated with a soft pneumatic bidirectionally bendable actuator via a vacuum-assisted equal load-sharing design. This gripper extends the adaptable object diameter from 15 mm to infinity and significantly increases the load capacity to over 2 kg without compromising the original compliance. The multifunctional grasping modes and high load capacity are successfully demonstrated by grasping objects with diverse material components, various surface shapes.
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 callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
