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.
Structural analysis of built-in sensor frame in jaws with linear type gripper
It is important to design gripper jaws and tips which contact with the handled part, for a proper conduction of a given mission of robot systems. Especially, it should be also considered to use what kind of sensors and degree of freedoms in gripper systems. If the tip of gripper has the force and torque sensor, it is possible to measure the value of reaction forces and torques from sensors on gripping. Further this leads to enhance the intelligence of gripper system such as the prevention of slip occurrence and the estimation of mass center position of handled parts. On the other hand, the smallest force and torque sensor among commercial ones has 17mm as a diameter and 15mm as a height. It is not compact to adapt even this smallest sensor in jaws of gripper. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the sensor equipped in jaws with smaller sizes, as not a package type but a separated built-in type (sensor frame and data acquisition board is separated). In this paper, as a part of embodiment of built-in type force and torque sensor, we describe the required DOF of sensor for pick-and-place tasks and the structural analysis of sensor frame built-in jaw with linear type gripper.
The Structural Reinforcement Design of Firefighter Assistance Robots for Improving the Impact Resistance
In this paper, we describe the structural reinforcement approach of the throwing-type firefighter assistance robot which can be thrown into a fire site to monitor inside the place and search trapped people while ensuring a firefighter's safety. The reinforcement design is focused on high strength with low weight for the robot. The in-depth structural analysis of the platform is carried out to track down the weakest part, especially with the 1.8m height of drop test. The analysis is verified by comparing with the 1.8m height of the drop test of the throwing-type firefighter assistance robot. The optimal approach for improving the strength of the weakest part aims at topological equivalent and equivalently stress distributed shape.