Grasping without squeezing: Shear adhesion gripper with fibrillar thin film
Elliot W. Hawkes, David L. Christensen, Amy Kyungwon Han, Hao Jiang, Mark R. Cutkosky
Abstract
Nearly all robotic grippers have one trait in common: they grasp objects with normal forces, either directly, or indirectly through friction. This method of grasping is effective for objects small enough for a given gripper to partially encompass. However, to grasp larger objects, significant grip forces and a high coefficient of friction are required. We present a new grasping method for convex objects, using almost exclusively shear forces. We achieve shear grasping with a gripper that utilizes thin film gecko-inspired fibrillar adhesives that conform to the curvature of the object. We present a verified model for grasping a range of curvatures and results that demonstrate the thin film fibrillar adhesives' increased contact area on textured surfaces when loaded in shear. Finally, the gripper is implemented on a robotic arm and grasps a variety of convex objects (at rest and ballistic).
BibTeX
@inproceedings{icra2015_graspingwithouts,
title = {Grasping without squeezing: Shear adhesion gripper with fibrillar thin film},
author = {Elliot W. Hawkes and David L. Christensen and Amy Kyungwon Han and Hao Jiang and Mark R. Cutkosky},
booktitle = {ICRA 2015},
year = {2015}
}