Evaluating end-effector modalities for warehouse picking: A vacuum gripper vs a 3-finger underactuated hand

Littlefield, Zakary; Zhu, Shaojun; Kourtev, Hristiyan; Psarakis, Zacharias; Shome, Rahul; Kimmel, Andrew; Dobson, Andrew; Souza, Alberto F. De; Bekris, Kostas E.

doi:10.1109/coase.2016.7743540

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Negrello et al designed a robotic wrist to expand the operating range of a manipulator for a task within a narrow space [6]. Littlefield compared the performance of suction and three-fingered grippers for grasping tasks in a narrow space [7]. In [3], [4], and [7], a suction gripper was used; however, it was difficult to grasp objects with rough surfaces stably using suction.…”

Section: A Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Single-Fingered Reconfigurable Robotic Gripper With a Folding Mechanism for Narrow Working Spaces

Nishimura

Muryoe

Asama

et al. 2022

IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett.

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This paper proposes a novel single-fingered reconfigurable robotic gripper for grasping objects in narrow working spaces. The finger of the developed gripper realizes two configurations, namely, the insertion and grasping modes, using only a single motor. In the insertion mode, the finger assumes a thin shape such that it can insert its tip into a narrow space. The grasping mode of the finger is activated through a folding mechanism. Mode switching can be achieved in two ways: switching the mode actively by a motor, or combining passive rotation of the fingertip through contact with the support surface and active motorized construction of the claw. The latter approach is effective when it is unclear how much finger insertion is required for a specific task. The structure provides a simple control scheme. The performance of the proposed robotic gripper design and control methodology was experimentally evaluated. The minimum width of the insertion space required to grasp an object is 4 mm (1 mm, when using a strategy).

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Section: A Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Littlefield compared the performance of suction and three-fingered grippers for grasping tasks in a narrow space [7]. In [3], [4], and [7], a suction gripper was used; however, it was difficult to grasp objects with rough surfaces stably using suction.…”

Section: A Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Single-Fingered Reconfigurable Robotic Gripper With a Folding Mechanism for Narrow Working Spaces

Nishimura

Muryoe

Asama

et al. 2022

IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett.

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“…We can see this in the design of the 2017 overall winning robot Cartman and the 2017 stow task winning robot from MIT; both of these robots used a tool change mechanism to switch between suction and parallel jaws [9,13]. Some teams went even further with this separation between grasping modes, using an off-the-shelf gripper to grasp a suction tool or having two arms, each with their own end-effector [6,11].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This desire for multimodal grasping was borne out in subsequent Amazon Robotics Challenges, where all of the top placing teams used a combination of suction and parallel jaw approaches [7][8][9][10]. Combining suction's ability for single-point grasping and parallel jaw's caging grasp can allow for a greater variety of objects to be manipulated [11].…”

Section: Introduction Reliable Grasping and Dexterous Manipulation Remains Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Multiplexed Manipulation: Versatile Multimodal Grasping via a Hybrid Soft Gripper

Chin

Barscevicius

Lipton

et al. 2020

2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

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The success of hybrid suction + parallel-jaw grippers in the Amazon Robotics/Picking Challenge have demonstrated the effectiveness of multimodal grasping approaches. However, existing multimodal grippers combine grasping modes in isolation and do not incorporate the benefits of compliance found in soft robotic manipulators. In this paper, we present a gripper that integrates three modes of grasping: suction, parallel jaw, and soft fingers. Using complaint handed shearing auxetics actuators as the foundation, this gripper is able to multiplex manipulation by creating unique grasping primitives through permutations of these grasping techniques. This gripper is able to grasp 88% of tested objects, 14% of which could only be grasped using a combination of grasping modes. The gripper is also able to perform in-hand object re-orientation of flat objects without the need for pre-grasp manipulation.

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“…While bin packing is studied extensively, to the best of the authors' knowledge there are few attempts to deploy bin packing solutions on real robots, where inaccuracies in vision and control are taken into account. Such inaccuracies have been considered in the context of efforts relating to the Amazon Robotics Challenge [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] but most of these systems do not deal with bin packing. Most deployments of automatic packing use mechanical components, such as conveyor trays, that are specifically designed for certain products [18], rendering them difficult to customize and deploy.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Robust Product Packing with a Minimalistic End-Effector

Shome

Tang

Song

et al. 2019

2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

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Advances in sensor technologies, object detection algorithms, planning frameworks and hardware designs have motivated the deployment of robots in warehouse automation. A variety of such applications, like order fulfillment or packing tasks, require picking objects from unstructured piles and carefully arranging them in bins or containers. Desirable solutions need to be low-cost, easily deployable and controllable, making minimalistic hardware choices desirable. The challenge in designing an effective solution to this problem relates to appropriately integrating multiple components, so as to achieve a robust pipeline that minimizes failure conditions. The current work proposes a complete pipeline for solving such packing tasks, given access only to RGB-D data and a single robot arm with a vacuum-based end-effector, which is also used as a pushing finger. To achieve the desired level of robustness, three key manipulation primitives are identified, which take advantage of the environment and simple operations to successfully pack multiple cubic objects. The overall approach is demonstrated to be robust to execution and perception errors. The impact of each manipulation primitive is evaluated by considering different versions of the proposed pipeline, which incrementally introduce reasoning about object poses and corrective manipulation actions.

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Evaluating end-effector modalities for warehouse picking: A vacuum gripper vs a 3-finger underactuated hand

Cited by 13 publications

References 28 publications

Single-Fingered Reconfigurable Robotic Gripper With a Folding Mechanism for Narrow Working Spaces

Single-Fingered Reconfigurable Robotic Gripper With a Folding Mechanism for Narrow Working Spaces

Multiplexed Manipulation: Versatile Multimodal Grasping via a Hybrid Soft Gripper

Towards Robust Product Packing with a Minimalistic End-Effector

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