Gripping Device for Heavy and Deformable Materials Handling: Concept, Design, Selection and Test

Abstract

Automated handling of heavy deformable goods, due to their challenging material properties, sets a benchmark for handling sacks, such as bags of fabrics, synthetic packings, papers filled with coffee, cereals and plastic pellets. The paper focuses on the handling of jute coffee sacks.Nowadays the manipulation of jute coffee sacks is performed manually, because of the lack of specific grippers able to grasp this type of object. Hence, a set of concepts have been designed and developed to test the functionality of new devices, specifically intended to be used for the grasping of jute coffee sacks. Grippers have then been ranked through a Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) method, in order to identify the best gripping tools for the handling of non-rigid materials. Finally, one of the most promising grippers has been designed and tested on real scale jute coffee sacks.