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Additively Manufactured Custom Soft Gripper with Embedded Soft Force Sensors for an Industrial Robot

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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Mr. T. Gulnergiz for building the data acquisition system for the fabricated soft force sensor and to Mr. C. Candas for assisting in the technical drawing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mechatronics Engineering Department, Istanbul Gedik University, 34987, Istanbul, Turkey

    Savas Dilibal & Haydar Sahin

  2. Mechanical Engineering Department, The University of Akron, Akron, OH, 44325, USA

    Savas Dilibal, Md Omar Faruk Emon & Jae-Won Choi

  3. Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, 44115, USA

    Josiah Owusu Danquah

Authors
  1. Savas Dilibal
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  2. Haydar Sahin
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  3. Josiah Owusu Danquah
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  4. Md Omar Faruk Emon
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  5. Jae-Won Choi
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Correspondence to Savas Dilibal or Jae-Won Choi.

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Dilibal, S., Sahin, H., Danquah, J.O. et al. Additively Manufactured Custom Soft Gripper with Embedded Soft Force Sensors for an Industrial Robot. Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf. 22, 709–718 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-021-00479-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-021-00479-0

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