A Contact Aided Compliant Displacement Delimited Gripper Manipulator

Abstract

A novel, monolithic, contactaided, displacementdelimited gripper is presented. It is designed to employ contact interactions between its deforming members to delimit the output displacement such that excessive forces on the soft, fragile workpieces are thwarted. The mechanism is appropriated using the topology, shape, and size optimization algorithm which, in addition to yielding structural details, also determines the interacting members and nature of contact. The symmetric halves of this design can be actuated independently thus rendering it the manipulative capabilities in addition to gripping. A cantilevered flexible “Uâ€‌ structure when introduced between the gripper ports of this mechanism can yield additional benefits in terms of reduced gripping forces. Macroscale Teflon prototype of the mechanism is tested on various workpieces having different stiffness properties. Using experimentally acquired vision data, reaction loads on the workpieces and gripper ports are estimated probabilistically by solving a Dirichlet problem for continua undergoing large deformation.