A Universal Gripper Using Optical Sensing to Acquire Tactile Information and Membrane Deformation

The universal gripper has attracted attention due to its simple structure and advanced grasping ability for irregularly shaped objects. In this research, we propose a novel design for a granular-jamming-based gripper which uses a transparent filling and a semi-transparent membrane to allow optical s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) pp. 1 - 9
Main Authors Sakuma, Tatsuya, Von Drigalski, Felix, Ding, Ming, Takamatsu, Jun, Ogasawara, Tsukasa
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.10.2018
Subjects
Cameras
Grasping
Grippers
Optical sensors
Prototypes
Strain
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Summary:The universal gripper has attracted attention due to its simple structure and advanced grasping ability for irregularly shaped objects. In this research, we propose a novel design for a granular-jamming-based gripper which uses a transparent filling and a semi-transparent membrane to allow optical sensing to detect both deformation of the membrane and the object being grasped. By adjusting the refractive index of an oil mixture to the refractive index of the granular bodies, we produced a fully transparent filling that allows the use of a camera inside the universal gripper. In this paper, we present the materials and development of our prototype, and describe the experimental confirmation of the prototype's performance. We showed that our prototype was able to grasp cylindrical and rectangular objects between 10 to 70 mm length while also tracking the deformation of the gripper.
ISSN:2153-0866
DOI:10.1109/IROS.2018.8593697