Circular Shell Gripper for Handling Food Products.

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Materials Science
• Mechanical Engineering

Background:

• Soft robotic grippers are widely studied for object manipulation.
• Existing grippers have limitations in arbitrary grasping postures and twisting capabilities.
• Handling efficiency (takt time) is an under-investigated aspect of soft grippers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and evaluate a novel circular shell gripper.
• To enable arbitrary handling postures and twisting manipulations.
• To investigate handling efficiency and performance with diverse objects.

Main Methods:

• Designed a gripper with a rigid external shell and four internal pneumatic air chambers.
• Developed finite element and analytical models to simulate and predict grasping performance.
• Validated models through experimental tests involving lifting and twisting a rigid cylinder.

Main Results:

• The gripper achieved a maximum lifting force of 50.97 N and twisting torque of 0.73 Nm at 10 kPa.
• Successfully handled deformable, heavy, and irregularly shaped food and drink products.
• Demonstrated arbitrary manipulation postures and twisting motions with pick-and-place times of ~2-5 seconds.

Conclusions:

• The proposed circular shell gripper effectively performs arbitrary grasping postures and twisting manipulations.
• The gripper shows versatility in handling various object types, including deformable and irregular shapes.
• Potential for further optimization of handling efficiency using parallel robots, though low-profile objects remain a challenge.