Design and Evaluation of an Energy-Saving Drive for a Versatile Robotic Gripper

The main task of robotic grippers, holding an object, does not require work theoretically. Yet grippers consume significant amounts of energy in practice. This paper presents an approach for designing an energy-saving drive for robotic grippers employing a Statically Balanced Force Amplifier (SBFA) and a Non-backdrivable mechanism (NBDM). A novel metric (Grip Performance Metric) to systematically evaluate drives regarding their energy consumption, is used in the design phase; afterwards, the realization and testing of a prototype (REED, Robotic Energy-Efficient Drive) are presented. Results show that the actuation force can be reduced by 92%, resulting in energy-savings of 86% for an example task. This shows the potential of drives based on SBFAs and NBDMs to achieve energy-neutral grippers.