Design Analysis of a Fabric Based Lightweight Robotic Gripper

The development of grasping mechanisms for various grasping applications have enabled robots to perform a wide variety of tasks in both industrial as well as domestic applications. Soft robotic grippers have been very useful in grasping applications with an added advantage of simpler control mechanisms as compared to rigid grippers. In this paper, a two fingered gripper inspired by the fingers of a human hand is introduced. The gripper is made from fabrics and, hence, compliant, lightweight, completely foldable and boasts a high payload capability. The mechanical design of the gripper is optimized through experiments, a maximum bending angle of 180° is achieved. We demonstrate grasping of a variety of objects using the new gripper