Purpose

The paper aims to present the design, validation and integration of a universal fabric gripper. Flexible material handling is one of the most challenging problems occurring in the field of manipulator robots. Because textile products shape and properties can widely vary, each textile and each technological operation should have its own specialized gripper. The objective of the work described here is therefore to design a universal gripper able to grip and transfer every kind of textile.

Design/methodology/approach

The design objectives are the ability to handle panels of varying shapes and sizes without material deformation and/or folding, and the easy integration with commercially available manipulator robots. To answer initial requirements and increase the textile gripping reliability, we opted to combine three different gripping technologies: vacuum, intrusion and pinch.

Findings

Each system was first validated independently through static tests. The vacuum technology offers a high reliability to handle impermeable materials. The intrusion technology is reliable for the manipulation of high porosity materials, while the pinch technology shows good results for all soft fabrics when combined with the vacuum technology. Then, the limits of the new gripper in terms of gripping capacity, compressed air consumption and characteristics and limitations of the flexible material handled were put in evidence using a robot arm. An automated selection program of the gripper based on the material characteristics has also been developed and implemented.

Originality/value

This paper fulfills an identified need to design a universal gripper able to grip and transfer every different kind of cut textile.

中文翻译：

---

织物通用夹具——设计、验证和集成

目的

本文旨在介绍通用织物夹持器的设计、验证和集成。灵活的物料搬运是机械手机器人领域中发生的最具挑战性的问题之一。由于纺织产品的形状和性能千差万别，每一种纺织品和每项技术操作都应该有自己的专用夹具。因此，这里描述的工作的目标是设计一种能够抓取和转移各种纺织品的通用夹具。

设计/方法/方法

设计目标是能够在不发生材料变形和/或折叠的情况下处理不同形状和尺寸的面板，以及与市售机械手的轻松集成。为了满足最初的要求并提高织物夹持可靠性，我们选择结合三种不同的夹持技术：真空、侵入和夹紧。

发现

每个系统首先通过静态测试独立验证。真空技术为处理不透水材料提供了高可靠性。侵入技术对于高孔隙率材料的操作是可靠的，而当与真空技术结合时，夹点技术对于所有柔软的织物显示出良好的效果。然后，新夹具在抓取能力、压缩空气消耗以及处理的柔性材料的特性和局限性方面的局限性通过机器人手臂得到证实。还开发并实施了基于材料特性的机械手自动选择程序。

原创性/价值

本文满足了设计一种通用夹持器的确定需求，该夹持器能够夹持和转移各种不同类型的切割纺织品。