A Parallel Gripper with a Universal Fingertip Device Using Optical Sensing and Jamming Transition for Maintaining Stable Grasps
Tatsuya Sakuma, Elaine Phillips, Gustavo Alfonso Garcia Ricardez, Ming Ding, Jun Takamatsu, Tsukasa Ogasawara
Abstract
For a robotic gripper to perform as well as the human hand, the performance of the tactile sensing and grasping of the gripper must be improved. In this study, a parallel gripper with a universal fingertip device that combines both object holding using jamming transition and optical sensing is proposed. By using a transparent material along with the jamming transition, both a tactile sense is achieved via optical sensing and the holding stability is improved by tightly restraining the object. Because the hardness of the contact region of the membrane can be adjusted, the gripper can grasp heavy objects as well as light objects. In this paper, the structure of the developed gripper and its grasping characteristics are described, and the experimental results from grasping and sensing are presented. It is experimentally shown that the proposed gripper is capable of both grasping fragile objects (such as an egg and tofu) by using tactile sensing and grasping dumbbells (with weights between 1-3 kg) by using jamming transition. Additionally, grasping a plastic cup, the proposed gripper demonstrated the potential of combining tactile sensing and more-constrained grasping.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{iros2019_aparallelgripper,
title = {A Parallel Gripper with a Universal Fingertip Device Using Optical Sensing and Jamming Transition for Maintaining Stable Grasps},
author = {Tatsuya Sakuma and Elaine Phillips and Gustavo Alfonso Garcia Ricardez and Ming Ding and Jun Takamatsu and Tsukasa Ogasawara},
booktitle = {IROS 2019},
year = {2019}
}