Design of the hybrid gripper with the jaw-tip grip and suction
End effectors are disposed in the end of the manipulator. And the end effectors do physical contact with target materials for doing assigned and required tasks. On the analysis of requirements for assigned tasks, there is one gripper should handle the solid material and soft material together. In the pick and place task, it is better to do suctions than grips. For this need, in this paper, we describe the proposed gripper that can do grip the solid material and absorb the soft material. Further the proposed gripper has linear motion guide (LM guide) and electric motor for linear displacements. This leads to various suction strategies.
A Versatile Object Pick-Up System Featuring Grip-Suction-Pinch Design Integration and Depth Vision Automation
Motivated to develop a versatile grasping system for pick-and-place operations, we proposed a system integrating mechanical gripping, suction, and pinch. Our design features a four-finger gripper; each is a single-DoF Watt-I linkage. An array of vacuum cups was integrated for a stable and robust grasp of large items. A soft electromagnetic actuator was employed for fast and silent actuation with compliance for safety and handling of fragile items. We examined grasping effectiveness by picking objects with a wide selection of size, aspect ratio, rigidity, and weight. Further, the system can localize the target using a depth camera and point cloud technology. Results show that the proposed system can effectively handle samples with a 1.5 mm to 325 mm, an aspect ratio of 1.0 to 10.05, a mass of 1 g to 2 kg, and rigidity varying from a pillow pack to hard metal. We also demonstrated successful attempts at grasping challenging objects such as eggshells, boiled eggs, thin plastic cards, and earbuds.
A Differential Capacitive Torque Sensor With Optimal Kinematic Linearity
This paper presents a new design for a torque sensor based on a differential capacitive technology. An arc-radial mechanism is adopted to achieve high rotary/radial motion linearity. Kinematic model of this assembly is derived via vector loop equations. A nonlinearity index is formulated and practical kinematic constraints are imposed. Results show that very high kinematic linearity could be achieved by this new device