Design and Implementation of a Multi-Function Gripper for Grasping General Objects

The development of a reliable pick-and-place system for industrial robotics is facing an urgent demand because many manual-labor works, such as piece-picking in warehouses and fulfillment centers tend toward automation. This paper presents an integrated gripper that combines a linkage-driven underactuated gripper with a suction gripping system for picking up a variety of objects in di erent working environments. The underactuated gripper consists of two fingers, and each finger has three degrees of freedom that are obtained by stacking one five-bar mechanism over one double parallelogram. Furthermore, each finger is actuated by two motors, both of which can be installed at the base owing to the special architecture of the proposed robotic finger. A suction cup is used to grasp objects in narrow spaces and cluttered environments. The combination of the suction and traditional linkage-driven grippers allows stable and reliable grasping under di erent working environments. Finally, practical experiments using a wide range of objects and under di erent grasping scenarios are performed to demonstrate the grasping capability of the integrated gripper.This research was funded by the Technology Innovation Program (or Industrial Strategic Technology Development Program) (Grant Number 20001856, Development of Robotic Work Control Technology Capable of Grasping and Manipulating Various Objects in Everyday Life Environment Based on Multimodal Recognition and Using Tools) funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE, Sejong City, Korea), and performed by the ICT-based Medical Robotic Systems Team of Hanyang University, Department of Electronic Systems Engineering was supported by the BK21 Plus Program funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF). The APC was funded by Grant Number 20001856