Cloth manipulation has been mostly advancing in perception and modeling methods for cloth state estimation and grasping point detection. In comparison, less attention has been put on end-effector design. Indeed, most implementations use a parallel gripper that can only perform pinch grasps. Instead, a more versatile set of possible grasp types could ease many tasks by providing more support to certain parts of the object, as well as make feasible tasks that become very complex when executed with only pinch grasps. We present a versatile gripper design which, besides the common open-close thumb+finger(s) feature, has a couple of reconfiguration degrees of freedom that offer, first, a wide base plane to provide support and second, variable friction surface on the thumb tip. Our gripper can execute a versatile set of grasps that ease some complex tasks such as pick and place folded clothes or fold in the air. In addition, the variable friction mechanism enables a more robust pinch-and-slide manipulation to trace cloth edges. Our evaluation shows the gripper potential to execute a wide variety of cloth manipulation tasks.

中文翻译：

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用于布料操作的多功能夹具

布料操作主要在布料状态估计和抓点检测的感知和建模方法方面取得进展。相比之下，对末端执行器设计的关注较少。事实上，大多数实现使用只能执行捏抓的平行抓手。相反，一组更通用的可能抓握类型可以通过为对象的某些部分提供更多支持来减轻许多任务的负担，并使仅用捏手执行时变得非常复杂的可行任务变得容易。我们提出了一种通用的抓手设计，除了常见的拇指和手指的开合功能外，还有几个重新配置的自由度，首先，提供一个宽基平面来提供支撑，第二个，可变摩擦表面在拇指尖。我们的抓手可以执行多种抓握，可以轻松完成一些复杂的任务，例如拾放折叠的衣服或在空中折叠。此外，可变摩擦机制可实现更强大的捏合操作，以追踪布料边缘。我们的评估显示了夹持器执行各种布料操作任务的潜力。