Finger design automation for industrial robot grippers: A review <s> Conclusion <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> Conclusion <s> In this paper we present an algorithm to determine the location of contact points to obtain force closure grasps on tree dimensional objects. The shape of the object is assumed to be given by a triangle mesh - a format widely used in CAD software. Our algorithm can handle an arbitrary number of contact points and does nor require any prior information about their initial locations. Through an iterative process, contact point locations are updated aiming at improving a commonly used grasp quality metric. The process is global in the sense that during the process the whole surface of the object can be explored, and contact point locations can cross sharp edges that usually represent a problem for optimization algorithms relying on smooth surface representations. Extensive simulation results illustrate the performance of the proposed method, outlining strengths and directions for further research. <s> BIB002
This paper reviews the enabler studies for finger design automation and the key processes to achieve this goal. An exhaustive literature review is carried out by filtering down thousands of articles to a manageable number of articles. These articles are used to categorize the key processes in finger design automation, i.e. grasp, finger design and experimental verification. Furthermore, each key process is divided into sub-categories and the most promising method for each category is identified. Extraction of this review and the results are presented as follows. o Grasp: Robotic grasp can be divided into two wide research areas of grasp synthesis and grasp analysis. • Grasp Synthesis: The proposed methods for grasp synthesis are categorized as analytical and data-driven approaches. According to the results, analytical approaches are more appropriate for finger design automation than data-driven. Suggested method: Along with analytical approaches, the method proposed by BIB002 is suitable for implementing on finger design automation. • Grasp Analysis: The proposed analyzing methods for measuring the quality of possible grasps are grouped as general metric, task-oriented metrics and uncertainty-based metrics. Suggested method: Since each grasp analysis group measures an independent quality factor, the combination of metrics is the best way in order to ensure more accurate grasp quality prediction. o Finger Design: Limited research is done in gripper finger design. The section is divided to modular design, re-configurable design and customized design. Among these approaches, customized design methods are considered most practical for automation of the finger design procedure. Suggested method: The customized design method presented by BIB001 is suggested for finger design automation due to ability of integration with CAD tools. • Collision Detection: Many collision detection tools and algorithms have been generated in the literatures to fulfill various purposes that can be implemented in finger design automation. Suggested method: The most relevant approach for finger design automation is utilizing built-in collision detection tools in CAD software. • Multi-function Finger Design: It is shown that designing multifunction fingers may remarkably increase the workcell performance yet it has not been studied properly due to the inherent complexities of this task. Suggested method: While handful researches have considered the significance of multi-function finger design, the literature lacks a practical method to tackle this issue. o Experimental Verification: Verifying the designed fingers by executing experiments are crucial in the automated finger design procedure. Virtual and physical experiment are two methods to examine the functionality of the fingers. • Virtual Experiment: This type of experiment is based on simulating the robot operation in a virtual environment. Virtual experiments are popular among researchers due to its controllability, simplicity and low cost. Suggested method: Public available simulators are the best option for performing virtual experiments because of their large gripper libraries, flexibility on designing environment and simplicity to integrate with other algorithms. • Physical Experiment: Even though the virtual experiments are simple and cheap, studies shown that they do not cover all unknowns that are unfolded in real experiment. Therefore, physical experiments are essential to ensure the practicability of the designed fingers. Suggested method: While the experimental methods plays a significant role in finger design automation, no research study presents a concrete method for executing physical experiments. According to the results of this review, the handful developed methods for finger design automation suffer from two substantial problems. Some methods are limited to handling polyhedral workpieces and inapplicable for complex geometries. Others miss out some key processes in their design procedure which leads into uncertainty in practicability of the designed fingers. By connecting all key processes for finger design automation presented in this review, one can quantify the capabilities of automated finger design in compare to other related finger design approaches. As a result, finger design automation literature lacks, besides the points already made above, a study that benchmarks the performance of the fingers designed by considering all key processes with fingers design by existing approaches that partially consider key processes. 