Passive adaptive grippers: a mini-review

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Mechanical Engineering
• Materials Science

Background:

• Passive adaptive grippers utilize a host system's degrees of freedom (DOFs) for manipulation.
• Embodied intelligence and environmental interaction are key to gripper function: prehension, retention, and release.
• State-of-the-art passive gripper designs are classified across three gripping phases.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a framework for classifying passive adaptive gripper designs.
• To accelerate research and guide application-specific design of passive grippers.
• To identify challenges and future research directions in passive gripper technology.

Main Methods:

• Classification of existing passive gripper designs.
• Analysis of gripper performance across prehension, retention, and release phases.
• Review of state-of-the-art literature on passive adaptive grippers.

Main Results:

• A classification framework for passive grippers is established, categorizing designs by prehension, retention, and release mechanisms.
• Fully passive grippers combining reliable prehension, internal retention, and contactless release are currently scarce.
• A trade-off exists between gripper controllability and host system flexibility, necessitating task-specific design.

Conclusions:

• Future research should focus on developing passive preloading mechanisms to minimize activation force.
• Optimal passive gripper design requires tailoring to specific tasks and operational constraints.
• Addressing the scarcity of fully passive grippers with combined functionalities is a key challenge.