Design optimization of robot grippers using teaching-learning-based optimization algorithm

This paper presents the performance of teaching-learning-based optimization (TLBO) algorithm to obtain the optimum geometrical dimensions of a robot gripper. Design of robot grippers is an important aspect of the overall robot performance and the most demanding process in any robot system to match the need for the production requirement. Robot grippers are the end effectors used to grasp and hold the objects. A gripper acts as the bridge between the robot arm and the environment around it. Five objectives, namely the difference between the maximum and minimum gripping forces, the force transmission ratio, the shift transmission ratio, length of all the elements of the gripper, and the effort of the gripper mechanism are considered as objective functions. The problem has seven design variables, including six variables as dimensions of the gripper and one variable as the angle between two links of the gripper. Three robot grippers are optimized. Computational results shows that the TLBO algorithm is better or competitive to other optimization algorithms recently reported in the literature for the considered problem.