A Sensorized Soft Robotic Hand with Adhesive Fingertips for Multimode Grasping and Manipulation.

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Materials Science
• Bioengineering

Background:

• Soft robotic grippers offer compliant grasping but have limitations in dexterity compared to human hands.
• Existing soft grippers often require complex control systems for effective manipulation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a sensorized multi-fingered soft gripper with enhanced grasping and manipulation capabilities.
• To integrate bioinspired adhesive fingertips and a kirigami-patterned sensor for improved performance and control.

Main Methods:

• Designed a soft gripper with mushroom-like microstructured adhesive fingertips for enhanced adhesion.
• Incorporated independently actuated, multi-jointed soft fingers for versatile motion.
• Integrated a kirigami-patterned stretchable sensor for real-time motion monitoring.

Main Results:

• A single fingertip achieved a maximum load capacity of 4.18 N.
• The three-fingered gripper demonstrated a maximum load capacity of 28.29 N.
• Successfully grasped and manipulated various objects with different shapes and sizes.

Conclusions:

• The developed soft gripper effectively combines adhesion and form closure grasping modes.
• The sensorized design enables precise motion monitoring and control for complex manipulation tasks.
• Demonstrated practical application in remotely controlled cooking scenarios.