Soft robotic grippers are required for power grasping of objects without inducing damage. Additive manufacturing can be used to produce custom-made grippers for industrial robots, in which soft joints and links are additively manufactured. In this study, a monoblock soft robotic gripper having three geometrically gradient fingers with soft sensors was designed and additively manufactured for the power grasping of spherical objects. The monoblock structure design reduces the number of components to be assembled for the soft gripper, and the gripper is designed with a single cavity to enable bending by the application of pneumatic pressure, which is required for the desired actuation. Finite element analysis (FEA) using a hyperelastic material model was performed to simulate the actuation. A material extrusion process using a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) was used to manufacture the designed gripper. Soft sensors were produced by a screen printing process that uses a flexible material and ionic liquids. The grasping capability of the manufactured gripper was experimentally evaluated by changing the pneumatic pressure (0–0.7 MPa) of the cavity. Experimental results show that the proposed monoblock gripper with integrated soft sensors successfully performed real-time grasp detection for power grasping.

需要使用柔软的机械手来抓取物体而不会造成损坏。增材制造可用于生产用于工业机器人的定制抓爪，其中，软接头和链节通过增材制造。在这项研究中，设计并整体制造了带有三个带有软传感器的几何渐变手指的整体式软机器人抓手，用于抓取球形物体。整体结构设计减少了用于软抓爪的组件数量，抓爪设计有单个腔体，可通过施加气压来弯曲，这是所需致动所必需的。使用超弹性材料模型进行了有限元分析（FEA）以模拟驱动。使用热塑性聚氨酯（TPU）的材料挤压工艺用于制造设计的抓爪。软传感器是通过使用柔性材料和离子液体的丝网印刷工艺生产的。通过改变型腔的气压（0–0.7 MPa），通过实验评估了制成的抓爪的抓地能力。实验结果表明，所提出的带有整体式软传感器的整体式抓爪成功地执行了用于功率抓取的实时抓握检测。