The Development of a Soft Robot Hand with Pin-Array Structure

Abstract

This paper proposes a soft robot hand with pin-array structure and self-adaptive function, CTSA-II hand, where CTSA is the Cluster tube self-adaption. The CTSA-II hand is designed with a quite concise structure and consists of bases, a pin array, a spring array, and a membrane. When the CTSA-II hand grasps an object, the pins will slide along the trajectory to conform to the profile of the object under the reaction force applied by the object, and thus the outer membrane will form a specific shape, and then the vacuum drives the CTSA-II hand to grasp the object. Theoretical analysis shows that the CTSA-II hand can generate enough grasping force and get good stability. Moreover, the optimization of its structure is achieved by studying the effects of specific parameters. The capture experimental results of the prototype show that the CTSA-II hand can realize self-adaptive grasping of different sizes and shapes with a high degree of fit and a high success rate. A series of research experiments show the influence of various factors on the grasping force, which verifies the results of the theoretical analysis with the CTSA-II hand. Compared to the traditional robot hand, the CTSA-II hand has good crawl performance, concise structure, small volume, and easy assembly.

Design, kinematics, and prototyping of a gripping mechanism to adapt large space

“…Advanced actuators, for instance, have extended the functionalities of robotic hands, enabling them to handle small objects with precision by employing arrays of pins. 12,13 This breakthrough has addressed some limitations of traditional robotic hands, facilitating a more nuanced interaction with diverse objects. For objects with low friction, such as cylindrical items, a novel centripetal mechanism has been proposed.…”

Design and experimental evaluation of a new modular underactuated multi-fingered robot hand

“…19–21 The soft hand fully exerts the natural flexibility of various flexible materials in the manufacturing process and fully utilizes the nonlinearity, viscoelasticity, and hysteresis of the material in the movement and control of the soft robot hand, which simplifies the complexity of the robot hand control system and increases the flexibility and interactivity of the robot hands. Some typical applications include the RBO hand 2 22 of the University of Berlin, the OS-HAND four-finger software hand 23 and the CSTA-II software robot hand 24 of Tsinghua University, BCL-13 25 developed by University of Hong Kong, and a software robot 26 developed by the University of Colorado.…”