We propose a soft robotic gripper that can handle various types of fabrics with delicacy for applications in the field of garment manufacturing. The design was inspired by the adhesion mechanism of a parasitic fish called ‘lamprey’. The proposed gripper not only is able to pick up and hold a single sheet of fabric from a stack but also does not make any damages on it. In this work, we first modeled the holding force of the gripper and then experimentally evaluated its performance with different types of fabrics, in terms of the holding force and the response time. The experimental data showed a reasonable agreement with the predicted values by the model. The actuation time and the maximum holding force measured in the experiments were 0.32 seconds and 1.12 N, respectively. The gripper showed high success rates in picking up a single sheet of air permeable fabric, which was not possible by a commercial vacuum pad. It also showed durability in repeated motions of gripping test over 20,000 cycles. We believe the proposed gripper has a high potential in realizing smart manufacturing in garment industry.

中文翻译：

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使用带有嵌入式微针的软机器人夹持器进行精细的织物处理

我们提出了一种柔软的机器人抓手，可以处理各种类型的织物，适用于服装制造领域的应用。该设计的灵感来自一种叫做“七鳃鳗”的寄生鱼的粘附机制。所提出的夹持器不仅能够从一叠织物中拾取并保持单张织物，而且不会对其造成任何损坏。在这项工作中，我们首先模拟了夹具的夹持力，然后在夹持力和响应时间方面对不同类型织物的性能进行了实验评估。实验数据显示出与模型预测值的合理一致。实验中测量的驱动时间和最大保持力分别为 0.32 秒和 1.12 N。夹持器在拾取单片透气织物方面表现出很高的成功率，这是商业真空垫无法实现的。它还在超过 20,000 次循环的抓握测试的重复运动中显示出耐用性。我们相信所提出的夹持器在实现服装行业的智能制造方面具有巨大潜力。