Finger design automation for industrial robot grippers: A review <s> Multi-function (Multipurpose) Finger Design <s> In support of rapid-response manufacturing, we propose a new technique for automated design and fabrication of fixture and gripper tooling for mechanical assembly. Our technique uses geometric computations on CAD part descriptions to derive form and frictional form closure tooling. In addition, we invoke rapid prototyping technology to fabricate the computed tooling directly from the derived CAD descriptions. This paper introduces the concepts of our approach to automatic tooling generation, illustrates initial results, and surveys the additional work to be done to further exploit the technique. <s> BIB001 </s> Finger design automation for industrial robot grippers: A review <s> Multi-function (Multipurpose) Finger Design <s> Until now, many design and manufacturing tasks have only seen partial computerization. One such task is that of assembly planning. This paper presents a system for use in a subarea of assembly planning, the configuration of grippers for robotic assembly. The system is fully automated and thus represents a departure from current practice. The paper gives an example of the application of the system to simple gripper design problems. <s> BIB002
In assembly applications, multi-function fingers play a very significant role in decreasing tool-change operation and consequently increasing throughput of the workcell. Designing the gripper fingers in such a way that they can grasp more than one part can enormously reduce the cycle time for executing an assembly task when handling various object shapes  . Therefore considering this information in finger design is essential. However, designing multi-functional fingers demands a high level of skill and experience in finger design area. Therefore, adding this functionality to the automated finger design tool can extremely increase its value of it. Unfortunately, few researchers mention the importance of multi-functional fingers in their work and only a handful of them propose methods for design automation of such fingers. BIB002 propose a trial and error based method in their design algorithm. Their algorithm starts to design a set of fingers for the workpiece A. Then the algorithm checks whether the workpiece B can be grasped with the designed fingers. If it can, there is no need to design a new set of fingers. Otherwise the same design process is applied to workpiece B and the designed fingers are checked if they can grasp the workpiece A or not. If not, a separate set of fingers is required for each workpiece. While the proposed method is simple to implement, it is only applicable to geometries having similar shape. BIB001 propose two methods for automatically designing multi-functional fingers. The first method uses the geometric superposition of the workpieces to design gripper fingers. The second method translates and/or rotates one or more of the workpieces in different orientations, then uses the first method to check for a solution. As the authors also mention, the first method fails for cases that workpieces with similar geometry but different dimensions, for instance two spheres with different radii. Similarly, the second method does not guarantee a feasible solution as it approaches random translation and rotation of workpieces.