Abstract
Industrial automation calls for precise tasks with cycle times reduced to the minimum. At the same time, when handling delicate products such as fruits and vegetables, accelerations must be kept low to keep interaction forces under a certain threshold to avoid damage. This trade-off hinders the penetration of automation in many relevant application fields. This paper investigates using soft technology to solve this challenge. We propose the FinFix gripper, a non-anthropomorphic soft gripper capable of handling delicate objects at high acceleration using a contact-reactive grasping approach. This gripper has two entirely passive sensorized fingers that establish contact and two active fingers that are actuated pneumatically through a rigid mechanism allowing for rapid closure. We provide exhaustive experimental validation by connecting the gripper to a delta robot. The system can reliably execute pick-and-place cycles in ∼1 s when the distance between the pick and the place locations is 400 mm, resulting in a peak speed of ∼10ms . None of the fragile objects used during the experiments showed any damage. The only information needed is a rough estimation of the object's position to be grasped and a contact event to trigger the reflex. The test results show that the gripper can hold fragile objects during lateral accelerations of 10g.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics, RoboSoft 2023 |
Publisher | IEEE |
Number of pages | 7 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9798350332223 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2023 |
Event | IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics, RoboSoft 2023 - Singapore Duration: 3 Apr 2023 → 7 Apr 2023 https://softroboticsconference.org/ |
Conference
Conference | IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics, RoboSoft 2023 |
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Period | 3/04/23 → 7/04/23 |
Internet address |
Bibliographical note
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-careOtherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.