Abstract
This paper presents the structural design and analysis of a novel compliant gripper based on the Scott-Russell (SR) mechanism. The SR mechanism in combination with a parallelogram mechanism enables the achievement of a pure translation of the gripper tips, which is attractive for practical micromanipulation and microassembly applications. Unlike traditional pure-translation grippers, the reported SR-based gripper exhibits a simple structure as well as compact dimension because the in-plane space is fully used. The kinematics, statics and dynamics models of the gripper mechanism are established, and finite element analysis (FEA) simulations are carried out to verify the structure design. A prototype has been developed for experimental testing. The results not only demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed SR-based gripper design but also reveal a promising performance of the gripper when driven by piezoelectric stack actuators. Moreover, several variations of the gripper structure are presented as well.
Highlights
Robotic micro- and nano-handling systems are important to realize the automated manipulation and assembly of objects in micro- and nanometre scales [1]
A new compliant gripper based on a Scott-Russell mecha‐ nism is proposed in this paper to amplify the piezoelectric stack actuator (PSA) input displacement and to achieve a parallel motion of the gripper tips
An analytical model is established to facilitate the design of gripping range, and the model is verified with finite element analysis
Summary
Robotic micro- and nano-handling systems are important to realize the automated manipulation and assembly of objects in micro- and nanometre scales [1]. As a crucial device in micro-handling systems, the microgripper has attracted intensive attention from both academia and industry. The piezoelectric actuator in particular is attractive thanks to its properties of quick response speed and ultrahigh positioning resolution [5, 6]. A piezoelectric stack actuator (PSA) is employed for the drive in this research. Concerning the structure design, a great number of microgrippers have been devised using compliant mecha‐ nisms. It is known that the reaction force will appear at the contact point once the gripper tips make contact with the target object. When grasping some objects which have a curved surface, the reaction force may push the grasped object away from the gripper tips [13]. It is desirable to devise microgrippers whose tips provide a pure translational motion [14,15]. The majority of parallel-motion grippers possess a complex structure [13,14], which complicates the analysis and fabrication procedures
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