Automated Configuration of Modular Gripper Fingers

Abstract

The trend of individualization of demand presents companies with the challenge of preparing their production, on the one hand, for ever more extensive and complicated products, but on the other hand also an increasing variety of products. Handling, as a component of any automated process, plays an essential role in this context, since these non-value-adding process steps must run reliably and quickly, even for workpieces with a large number of variants. The performance of a handling system depends on the adaptation of the gripper’s fingers to the respective workpiece since the fingers are the only components that have direct contact with the workpiece. Since the change of the gripper, as well as the production of new gripper fingers for adaptation, is time-consuming, modular gripper fingers are increasingly coming into focus. An overview of a holistic approach for the selection and dimensioning of gripper fingers from modules is presented in this paper. First, the requirements for gripper fingers are determined and converted into functions. Based on this, the overall structure of gripper fingers is broken down into modules according to technical and functional aspects. In the sense of variant-oriented product design, concepts for modules are developed, which are then designed together with the interfaces between the finger modules and between the finger and gripper. Gripping points with sufficient contact area on workpieces are determined with a gripping point determination. Based on the developed construction kit of gripper fingers for mechatronic parallel grippers and the characteristics of the handling objects as well as the determined gripping points, a method is then described that allows an automated configuration of gripper fingers with integrable sensors for a given number of workpieces.