Design and analysis of an origami-based three-finger manipulator

This paper describes a new robotic manipulator with three fingers based on an origami twisted tower design. The design specifications, kinematic description, and results from the stiffness and durability tests for the selected origami design are presented. The robotic arm is made of a 10-layer twisted tower, actuated by four cables with pulleys driven by servo motors. Each finger is made of a smaller 11-layer tower and uses a single cable directly attached to a servo motor. The current hardware setup supports vision-based autonomous control and internet-based remote control in real time. For preliminary evaluation of the robot's object manipulation capabilities, arbitrary objects with varying weights, sizes, and shapes (i.e., a shuttlecock, an egg shell, a paper cub, and a cubic block) were selected and the rate of successful grasping and lifting for each object was measured. In addition, an experiment comparing a rigid gripper and the new origami-based manipulator revealed that the origami structure in the fingers absorbs the excessive force applied to the object through force distribution and structural deformation, demonstrating its potential applications for effective manipulation of fragile objects.