Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 05, 2019 - June 08, 2019
This paper proposes an underactuated finger mechanism using four bar cross linkage to expand the grasping function of parallel grippers. Because of the simple control and low cost, conventional parallel grippers have been widely utilized as end effectors for industrial robots and experimental setups. However, the application of the grippers has been limited to simple tasks, because they have less versatility compared with human hand and fully actuated multi fingered robotic hands. Therefore, we propose an underactuated finger mechanism to improve the grasping versatility of the grippers without increasing actuators. The proposed finger mechanism is based on the four bar cross linkage. The mechanism can passively switch two grasping modes: precision grasp and power grasp. The underactuated fingers with the proposed mechanism were developed. Then, the precision and power grasp motion of the fingers were experimentally tested with a parallel gripper attaching the two fingers.
