Compliance Synthesis of CSFH MEMS-Based Microgrippers

Abstract

In the last decades, grippers have been employed extensively at the microscale, for example, in microbiology and in microassembly. In these fields, specifically, it is essential to improve the performance of these systems in terms of precision, actuation, and sensing of the gripping force. Recent investigations drew attention on the tip–environment interaction force, which gave rise to further studies on the tip compliance behavior. This paper reveals a new method for designing MEMS technology-based compliant microgrippers with prescribed specifications for the jaw tip compliance. This approach relies on the equivalence between a compliant mechanism and its corresponding pseudorigid-body model (PRBM), the former embedding conjugate surfaces flexure hinges (CSFHs) as flexures. Such correspondence has been assessed by means of finite element analysis (FEA) simulations and theoretical models.