Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute Science and Technology, Ulsan Republic of Korea.
Soft Robot. 2024 Aug;11(4):698-708. doi: 10.1089/soro.2023.0099. Epub 2024 Mar 14.
Soft robotic grippers excel at achieving conformal and reliable contact with objects without the need for complex control algorithms. However, they still lack in grasp and manipulation abilities compared with human hands. In this study, we present a sensorized multi-fingered soft gripper with bioinspired adhesive fingertips that can provide both fingertip-based adhesion grasping and finger-based form closure grasping modes. The gripper incorporates mushroom-like microstructures on its adhesive fingertips, enabling robust adhesion through uniform load shearing. A single fingertip exhibits a maximum load capacity of 4.18 N against a flat substrate. The soft fingers have multiple joints, and each joint can be independently actuated through pneumatic control. This enables diverse bending motions and stable grasping of various objects, with a maximum load capacity of 28.29 N for three fingers. In addition, the soft gripper is equipped with a kirigami-patterned stretchable sensor for motion monitoring and control. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our design by successfully grasping and manipulating a diverse range of objects with varying shapes, sizes, and curvatures. Moreover, we present the practical application of our sensorized soft gripper for remotely controlled cooking.
软体机器人夹爪擅长在无需复杂控制算法的情况下与物体实现贴合且可靠的接触。然而，与人类的手相比，它们在抓取和操作能力方面仍有所欠缺。在这项研究中，我们提出了一种带有生物启发型粘性指尖的传感多指软体夹爪，它可以提供基于指尖的黏附抓取和基于手指的形状封闭抓取模式。夹爪在其粘性指尖上集成了蘑菇状的微结构，通过均匀的负载剪切实现了强大的黏附。单个指尖在与平坦基底接触时可提供最大 4.18N 的负载能力。软体手指有多个关节，每个关节都可以通过气动控制独立驱动。这使得各种弯曲运动和对不同物体的稳定抓取成为可能，三个手指的最大负载能力为 28.29N。此外，软体夹爪配备了一种剪纸图案的可拉伸传感器，用于运动监测和控制。我们通过成功抓取和操作各种形状、大小和曲率的物体来证明我们设计的有效性。此外，我们还展示了我们的传感软体夹爪在远程控制烹饪方面的实际应用。
