Sensor elements made of conductive silicone rubber for passively compliant gripper

This article is an approach of a new design of an adaptive underactuated compliant gripper with a distributed compliance and embedded sensor elements. The principle with this passively compliant gripper is based on the form adaption and also on the frictional connection, i.e., the adapted form and the frictional force will be used to hold the object. This gripper has an outside- and between-grasp, and it is able to pick up unfamiliar objects of different shapes. The adaptive gripper surfaces will have embedded sensor elements which will have two functions—it will be a part of the gripper structure and it will have sensing capability. A nonconductive silicone rubber and conductive silicone rubber will be used for the gripper structure. The production method of the gripper and the experimental measurements will be explained here.

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