Toward a Smart Compliant Robotic Gripper Equipped with 3D-Designed Cellular Fingers

Usual lightweight soft robotic bodies built with elastomer materials show lack of structural stiffness that limits their use in many practical applications. Herein, an architectured robotic body design with deformable cellular structures, which is easy to fabricate, lightweight, mechanically durable, and compliant while maintaining its resilience, is proposed. The cellular body design overcomes not only the stiffness limitation but also other drawbacks of most common soft bodies that may damage from high pressure or impact. An artificial cellular finger is printed together with embedded pressure sensors on the fingertip to form a functional system in a single-building process with the advantage of multi-material 3D printing. The integrated architectured grippers, composed of cellular fingers with a repeatable, reliable bending profile, demonstrate maximum gripping force as 16N on actuation, with gripping capability of various objects. 3D cellular designs open up new possibilities for architectured robotic bodies that can immensely widen their space of applications.