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Topology optimization of a cable-driven soft robotic gripper

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Abstract

Improving the functionality of soft continuum manipulators to expand their application space has always been an important development direction for soft robotics. It remains very challenging to calculate the deformations of soft materials and predict the basic structure of soft fingers under complex objective functions and constraints. This work develops a cable-driven soft robotic gripper with multi-input and multi-output using topology optimization considering geometric nonlinearity, which not only performs adaptive grasping but also enables finer manipulations such as rotating or panning the target. A scheme that can describe adaptive grasping behavior is proposed, which converts the contact between the clamping surface and the object into a boundary condition to circumvent complex contact nonlinearities. An additive hyperelasticity technique is used to overcome numerical instabilities, and the finite element analysis is performed in ANSYS. Numerical simulations and experimental results are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the optimization algorithm and to illustrate the application potential of the proposed gripper.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51820105007, 51975216) and the Pearl River S&T Nova Program of Guangzhou (201906010061).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guangdong Key Laboratory of Precision Equipment and Manufacturing Technology, School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, People’s Republic of China

    Rixin Wang, Xianmin Zhang, Benliang Zhu, Hongchuan Zhang, Bicheng Chen & Haonan Wang

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  1. Rixin Wang
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  2. Xianmin Zhang
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  3. Benliang Zhu
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  4. Hongchuan Zhang
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  5. Bicheng Chen
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  6. Haonan Wang
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Correspondence to Xianmin Zhang or Benliang Zhu.

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Responsible Editor: Somanath Nagendra

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Replication of results

All the necessary data to reproduce the results reported here are provided in Sections 4 and 5. Readers can also contact us to get the codes by Email:zhangxm@scut.edu.cn.

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Wang, R., Zhang, X., Zhu, B. et al. Topology optimization of a cable-driven soft robotic gripper. Struct Multidisc Optim 62, 2749–2763 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00158-020-02619-y

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