Soft compliant grasping is essential in delicate manipulation tasks typically\nrequired in manufacturing and/or medical applications to prevent stress\nconcentration at the point of contact. In comparison with their rigid counterparts,\nthe intrinsic compliance of soft grippers offers simpler control and planning of the\ngrasping action, especially where robots are faced with a number of objects varying\nin shape and size. However, quantitative analysis is rarely utilized in the design and\nfabrication of soft grippers, due to the fact that significant and complex deformation\noccurs once the soft gripper is in contact with external objects. In this paper,\nwe demonstrate the design of a soft gripper using our novel bimorph-like pneumatic\nbending actuators. The gripper was modelled through finite element analysis to\nreflect its gripping capability during interaction with certain targeted objects. The\nproposed systematic design and analytical model was validated via experiments.\nThe system�s gripping capability was evaluated with objects of different weight and\ndimension. In addition, compliance testing has proved that the proposed soft gripper\nis able to grip objects of 60 g from the side, without causing exceeding concentration\nstress on the targeted object.
Loading....