3D‐Printed Pneumatically Controlled Soft Suction Cups for Gripping Fragile, Small, and Rough Objects

Advanced Intelligent Systems

Veikko Sariola¹  Anastasia Koivikko²  Cem Balda Dayan²  Dirk-Michael Drotlef²  Metin Sitti² 

[1] Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology Tampere University Korkeakoulunkatu 3 Tampere 33720 Finland;Physical Intelligence Department Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems Heisenbergstr. 3 Stuttgart 70569 Germany;

关键词: adhesion;    pick and place manipulation;    soft grippers;    soft robotics;    vacuum grippers;   

DOI  :  10.1002/aisy.202100034

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

A 3D‐printed pneumatically actuated soft suction gripper with an elastomer film is proposed. Suction in such gripper is actively controlled by applying a negative pressure behind the film. The elastomeric gripper body is 3D‐printed, making it easy to customize and integrate into future robotic gripping systems. The gripper can pick a wide variety of objects, such as delicate fruits, small parts, and parts with uneven loads, with high pull‐off forces (over 7.4 N with ∅ 20 mm/55 kPa). The achieved pull‐off forces are significantly higher than the previously reported suction cup grippers with films and more comparable with commercial vacuum grippers. The pull‐off forces show no significant differences with surfaces of varying roughness (up to root‐mean‐square roughness of 5.66 μm) and the gripper is able to pick and release target objects repeatedly. The gripper is also compared with a commercial vacuum gripper with comparable dimensions. It outperforms the commercial gripper in the case of fragile objects, objects smaller than the gripper diameter, and objects with uneven loads. It can apply high pull‐off forces while having controllable release, and is suitable for gripping a wide variety of real‐world objects, including heavy, rough, small, thin, and fragile ones.

【 授权许可】

Unknown