Journal
IEEE-ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS
Volume 28, Issue 3, Pages 1337-1346Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/TMECH.2022.3219108
Keywords
Dynamic capture; soft gripper; stiffness anisotropy; tentacle cluster
Ask authors/readers for more resources
In this article, a soft gripper inspired by the biological structures of multitentacled animals or plants is proposed. It uses a cluster of tentacles to achieve omnidirectional envelope and high tolerance to dynamic targets, enabling efficient capture.
Dynamic capture is a common skill that humans have practiced extensively but is a challenging task for robots in which sensing, planning, and actuation must be tightly coordinated to deal with targets of diverse shapes, sizes, and velocity. In particular, the impact force may cause serious damage to a rigid gripper and even its carrier, e.g., a robotic arm. Existing soft grippers suffer from low speed and force to actively respond to capturing dynamic targets. In this article, we propose a soft gripper capable of efficient capture of dynamic targets, taking inspiration from the biological structures of multitentacled animals or plants. The presented gripper uses a cluster of tentacles to achieve an omnidirectional envelope and high tolerance to dynamic target during the capturing process. In addition, a stiffness anisotropy property is implemented to the tentacle structure to form a trap making it easy for the targets to enter yet difficult to escape. We also present an analytical model for the tentacle structure to describe its deformation during the collision with a target. In experiments, we construct a robotic prototype and demonstrate its ability to capture dynamic targets.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available