Development of Multi-purpose Universal Gripper

As the industrial site is changing from the mass production of a few selected items to the small quantity batch production, various works are required in the factory's production line. The single degree of freedom(DOF) gripper that can grasp only the specific object has accounted for a large part in the industrial site until now. Recently, the underactuated-method gripper that can grasp adaptively depending on the shape of object is being released, but its grip target is limitative as well. Therefore, the gripper of fully-actuated method is required to grasp and operate various objects. Therefore, the multi-purpose universal gripper that can be used diversely in various production lines is being required. The existing fully-actuated method could not be easily applied to the industrial site because it was likely to break down and it was hard to maintain it due to the complex wiring. In order to solve this problem, the multi-purpose universal gripper(MPUG) of the fully-actuated method was manufactured which was maintained easily because the modular actuator replaceable by joint link was used and which could grasp and operate various objects. It was confirmed through the test that the manufactured MPUG could grasp various objects stably.