Novel Smart and Compliant Robotic Gripper: Design, Modelling, Experiments and Control

Abstract

This paper presents a further investigation of a novel adaptive soft robotic gripper with integrated active elements, i.e. sensors and actuators. In many contemporary robotic applications, there is a great need to grasp differently shaped and sized objects as well as objects of different stiffness or soft objects. Grippers based on classical rigid-body mechanisms cannot safely manipulate with such a wide variety of objects, as they are stiff and not adaptive. Adaptive gripper proposed here is based on elastic active compliant mechanisms. Via integrated sensors, and actuators active smart gripper changes the shape of its grasping surface and adapts to the object of unknown shape. Concept of a two-finger gripper and a functional prototype of one gripper finger are presented. Sensors are formed by using conductive graphite foam. The machine learning models of tactile foam sensors are presented. Actuators are formed by using a shape memory alloy wire nitinol. It is demonstrated that developed soft gripper concept with integrated active elements can realize multiple grasping patterns. Many potential applications in robotics are foreseen for the novel smart adaptive gripper.