A Thermoplastic Elastomer Belt Based Robotic Gripper

Novel robotic grippers have captured increasing interests recently because of their abilities to adapt to varieties of circumstances and their powerful functionalities. Differing from traditional gripper with mechanical components-made fingers, novel robotic grippers are typically made of novel structures and materials, using a novel manufacturing process. In this paper, a novel robotic gripper with external frame and internal thermoplastic elastomer belt-made net is proposed. The gripper grasps objects using the friction between the net and objects. It has the ability of adaptive gripping through flexible contact surface. Stress simulation has been used to explore the regularity between the normal stress on the net and the deformation of the net. Experiments are conducted on a variety of objects to measure the force needed to reliably grip and hold the object. Test results show that the gripper can successfully grip objects with varying shape, dimensions, and textures. It is promising that the gripper can be used for grasping fragile objects in the industry or out in the field, and also grasping the marine organisms without hurting them.Comment: Accepted by 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS