Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : April 22, 2024 - April 23, 2024
This paper describes a pseudo multi-DOF sea anemone soft gripper driven by a single pneumatic input. When grasping multiple objects, an optimal gripper should have a different posture for each object, meaning that grasping with a single gripper requires complex control and adaptation to various size and shapes. Therefore, we developed a soft gripper that mimics the sea anemone which use their many tentacles to capture prey of various size and shapes. Pneumatically driven soft fingers with double-helix reinforced fibers were developed for the gripper, and 1-DOF curvature was confirmed by pressurization. A soft gripper equipped with 18 fingers, and all fingers can be driven by a single pneumatic input. Grasping experiments confirmed that the soft gripper equipped with 18 fingers of 7 mm diameter could grasp 7 types of objects with different shapes.
