DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPLIANT GRIPPER DRIVEN BY 3 DOF SOFT ROBOT

This study presents the design, development, and experimental testing of a single piece designed compliant gripper manipulated by a 3 DOF soft robot. The manipulator consists of two soft links. While the bottom arm is 2 DOF and is tendon driven by two servo motors, the SDOF upper arm is also tendon driven by a servo motor. The two-finger-designed compliant gripper is also actuated by a servo motor. The base of the robot holds the motors and the soft manipulator. The MATLAB Simscape model of the robot is created to perform deformation and motion analysis of the gripper and soft manipulator. The cad model of the robot is imported, and the manipulator parts are converted into soft links using discrete beam elements. The large deflecting hinges on the compliant grippers are also transformed to mimic the physical gripper. Since the soft manipulator and the compliant gripper were designed monolithically, the robot was 3D printed as a single piece using thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). The gripper is tested for its grasping and lifting performance while recording the applied forces by the gripper using a Flex sensor. Using the opencv tool for image processing and object analysis, we used a dual-camera setup with a known environment to add intelligence to the robot. Since the manipulator is designed as soft, the gripper can reach any position within its working space with any orientation.