Design and modeling of a compliant gripper with parallel movement of jaws

Abstract

A compliant gripper with parallel movement of jaws is developed. The gripper is composed of a bar linkage mechanism and a bistable mechanism. After a target object is grasped, the embedded bistable mechanism can maintain the gripping of the object with no energy consumption. Unstable fixation due to rotary motion of opposing gripping arms of traditional tweezer-like grippers is alleviated by the proposed gripper. Kinetostatic models of the device based on chained beam constraint model are derived to assist the design of the device. Grasp function of an object is accomplished while the gripper proceeds from its first stable equilibrium position to its second stable equilibrium position, and release of the object is achieved when the gripper returns back to its first stable equilibrium position.