A Concept of Adaptive Two Finger Gripper with Embedded Actuators

Today in many industries there is a great need for grasping different shaped and soft objects. For safe grasping of such objects and specially a fragile one adaptability is required. Developing a gripper that can adapt the shape of its grasping surface to different shaped objects and achieve safe and reliable manipulations of that objects, represent a challenging task. Many micro domain applications would benefit from adaptive gripper and adaptive grasping, such as in medicine or biomedicine where there is a need for manipulations of human tissue or individual cells. This paper presents concept of a new adaptive two finger gripper with embedded actuators. By using compliant systems—compliant mechanisms with embedded actuators it is possible to develop an adaptive compliant gripper. By embedding the actuators gripper could morph or change the shape of its grasping surface and achieve different grasping patterns i.e. gripper would have structural adaptability. Synthesis methodology for the adaptive gripper that includes simultaneous topology optimization and actuators placement, is also presented. It will be shown that the developed adaptive gripper can achieve multiple shapes of its grasping surface when different contracting or extending actuators are active, whereby they realize different stroke.