A_Hybrid_Gripper_With_Soft_Material_and_Rigid_Structures
A_Hybrid_Gripper_With_Soft_Material_and_Rigid_Structures
1, JANUARY 2019 65
Abstract—Various robotic grippers have been developed over SPAs with a variety of forms and operating pressures, in-
the past several decades for robotic manipulators. Especially, the cluding granular jamming, and fiber-reinforced SPAs have been
soft grippers based on the soft pneumatic actuator (SPA) have been suggested; however, their practical application as a robotic grip-
studied actively, since it offers more pliable bending motion, inher-
ent compliance, and a simple morphological structure. However, per has been limited by a small fingertip force and slow ac-
few studies have focused on simultaneously improving the fingertip tuation speed. A large pneumatic compressor can be used to
force and actuation speed within the specified design parameters. address these issues, but the size of the whole system would be
In this study, we developed a hybrid gripper that incorporates increased [2], [6]. The granular jamming gripper, for example,
both soft and rigid components to improve the fingertip force and uses granular components, which are jammed in the soft cham-
actuation speed simultaneously based on three design principles:
first, the degree of bending is proportional to the ratio of the rigid ber under vacuum pressure [7]. As a large vacuum pump is
structure; second, a concave chamber design is preferred for large required for granular jamming, the pneumatic system required
longitudinal strain; and third, a round shape between soft and would inevitably be bulky. General SPAs with operating pres-
rigid materials increases the fingertip force. The suggested princi- sures in the range of 0–80 kPa have a slow actuation speed and
ples were verified using the finite element methods. The improved low fingertip forces [5], [6] have difficulties with the limited
performance of the hybrid gripper was verified experimentally and
compared with the performance of a conventional SPAs. The abil- actuation speed and fingertip forces. To increase the actuation
ity of the hybrid gripper to grasp different objects was evaluated speed, a fast-pneumatic network (fast-PneuNet) comprising a
and was applied in a teleoperated system. series of soft chambers and channels has been suggested [2].
Index Terms—Soft material robotics, grippers and other end-
However, the resulting fingertip force is low (<1.5 N) [2]–[4].
effectors, flexible robots. Improved fingertip force actuation has been achieved with fiber
or fabric reinforcement [8]–[10]. Since a large pneumatic pump
I. INTRODUCTION with pressures of 350 kPa is needed, the entire system is in-
evitably bulky. Also, the actuation speed is relatively slow as
ECENTLY, the limitations of rigid gripper due to the ne-
R cessity of additional linkages, complicated controls, and
so on, have been overcome by the soft gripper [1]. Especially, the
large volume changes are required for the bending. Above all,
few studies have attempted to enhance the actuation speed and
fingertip force simultaneously.
soft grippers based on soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs), which
Integrating different actuating mechanisms [11]–[13] or ma-
offer better compliance, and a higher degree of freedom than
terials have also been tried as hybrid actuators [14], [15]. How-
the rigid robot, have been actively developed [2]–[9]. Due to
ever, we are not focused on the integrating different actuating
the inherent compliance of soft materials, complicated controls
source, but incorporating the soft material and rigid structures.
and additional structures are not needed with soft grippers, as
Rigid materials were usually used to increase the stiffness of
the proper selection of materials of various stiffness allows
the soft structures [14]. For example, rigid structures were used
for simple control. Furthermore, soft grippers with SPAs are
to reinforce the soft chambers, inspired by the lobster [15].
constructed from low-cost and readily-available elastomers.
However, the degrees of freedom may be limited depending on
Manuscript received June 27, 2018; accepted October 14, 2018. Date of the rigid structures, which may reduce the compliance as the
publication October 31, 2018; date of current version November 15, 2018. This main advantages of SPAs, and may not focus on enhancing the
letter was recommended for publication by Associate Editor C. Laschi and actuation speed and fingertip force simultaneously.
Editor Y. Sun upon evaluation of the reviewers’ comments. This work was
supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) under Grant Thus, in this letter, we developed a hybrid gripper that in-
NRF-2016R1A5A1938472 funded by the Korean Government (MSIP), in part corporates both soft material and rigid parts to overcome the
by the Institute for Information and Communications Technology Promotion drawbacks of the conventional SPAs without reducing the com-
(IITP) under Grant 2017000910001100 (Development of multi-material 3D
printing technologies for flexible motion detection and control sensor modules) pliances (Fig. 1). The rigid structures are inserted into a fast
funded by the Korea government (MSIP), and in part by the Basic Science PneuNet, hereafter referred to as the hybrid PneuNet, assem-
Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) bled as the grippers, which have improved fingertip force, and
under Grant NRF-2018R1A1A1A05077442 funded by the Ministry of Science
and ICT. (Corresponding author: Joonbum Bae.) increased actuation speed. The main contributions of this letter
The authors are with the Bio-Robotics and Control (BiRC) Laboratory, De- are as follows: 1) design methodology for a hybrid PneuNet,
partment of Mechanical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and 2) experimental verification of the hybrid gripper, 3) a practi-
Technology, Ulsan 689-805, South Korea (e-mail:,[email protected]; tjtjdals
[email protected]; [email protected]). cal application as a simple and compact pneumatic system for
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LRA.2018.2878972 teleoperations.
2377-3766 © 2018 IEEE. Translations and content mining are permitted for academic research only. Personal use is also permitted, but republication/redistribution
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66 IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS, VOL. 4, NO. 1, JANUARY 2019
Fig. 1. The proposed hybrid gripper with soft and rigid structures.
C. Round Edge
The third design principle, i.e., the use of a round edge be-
tween soft and rigid materials of the hybrid PneuNet (Fig. 5(a)),
was applied to increase the fingertip force. Assuming a cham-
ber with a plain shape, a round-edge between the soft chambers
increases the contact area and guides the longitudinal elonga-
tion between the chambers and rigid parts with enhanced force
transmission (Fig. 5(a)). In a simplified model, in which the
interaction between soft and rigid structures is considered as a
simple linkage (Fig. 2(c)), the bending moment can be expressed
as follows:
Mi = li sin θi Fi,x + li cos θi Fi,y
= li sin θi σi,x dAyz + li cos θi σi,y dAxz (6)
where σi and d A are the stress, and contact area between the
soft and rigid structure, respectively. σi,x and σi,y represent the
decomposed stresses from σi in x and y direction. Fi is decom-
posed into x and y directional forces as shown in Fig. 2(c). d A is
also decomposed into the contact area projected onto the yz and
x z planes. The decoupled force components can be expressed
as the integral forms of the decoupled stresses and contact ar-
eas. Thus, the fingertip force can be manipulated by varying the
bending moment between soft and rigid materials.
The proposed round edge design is shown in Fig. 5(a)–(c).
Assuming that the entire system volume remains the same and
that the rigid structure does not protrude from the soft chambers,
the bending moment of each linkage increases with the round
edge configuration. The additional bending moment exerted by
the round edges between the soft chambers and rigid structures
is given by the following:
Mi,top = σi,y,e dAxz
n
Mi,RE n
Mi + Mi,top
Fig. 4. Longitudinal strain comparison based on the simulation of different Ftip.RE = = (7)
chamber shapes: (a) three different types of chamber shapes, (b) strain energy i=1
l i l cos θi i=1
li cos θi
comparison for the different chambers at the mid-height, (c) longitudinal strain
comparison at the mid-height. where Mi,top is the additional bending moment of each linkage
with the round edge design. Ftip,RE and Mi,RE represent the fin-
example, since the resultant vectors are headed to the mid- gertip force and ith bending moment for each linkage of the
height of the chamber, the more strain energy is accumulated hybrid PneuNet with round edge design. σi,y,e and σi,z,e decom-
for the concave chamber, compared with the convex chamber. posed from σi , in y and z direction, represent the additional
On the other hand, the less strain energy is accumulated with stresses, exerted at round edges (Fig. 5(b) and (c)). From (7),
the mid-height of convex chamber, since the resultant vector σi,y,e creates an additional bending moment Mi,top , which in-
left out of the mid-height. Thus, the differentiated accumulated creases the fingertip force with the round edge (Ftip,RE ). Given
strain energy due to the chamber shape induces the different that the z directional stress at the edge, σi,z,e , is applied sym-
longitudinal strain and the concave chamber would have more metrically in Fig. 5(c), it does not affect the additional bending
longitudinal strain. moment term but instead guides the longitudinal expansion of
For verification, the strain energies for each chamber shape at each chamber. To verify the suggested theoretical principle,
mid-height were compared, as shown in Fig. 4(b) up to 30 kPa. the fingertip force of the hybrid PneuNet was simulated up
The concave chamber had the largest strain energy, followed by to 40 kPa, with and without the round edges (Fig. 5(d)). The
PARK et al.: HYBRID GRIPPER WITH SOFT MATERIAL AND RIGID STRUCTURES 69
Fig. 5. Round edge design between the soft chamber and rigid structures: (a) hybrid PneuNet with the round edge design, (b) the detailed configuration of
the round edges (side view), (c) the detailed configuration of the round edges (top view), (d) fingertip force comparison based on the simulation showing the
effectiveness of the round edges.
fingertip force was enhanced by the round edge design, and its
gap was increased as the applied pressure was increased.
Fig. 10. Test for grasping different objects with the hybrid gripper : (a) tumbler
(300 g) (b) doll (145 g) (c) tape (502 g) (d) apple (426 g) (e) heat gun (631 g)
(f) banana (144 g) (g) box (212 g) (h) screwdriver (145 g).
IV. APPLICATION
A. Grasping Objects Test
We evaluated the ability of the hybrid gripper to grasp various
objects. The various weight and size of objects were grasped
(Fig. 10) below 80 kPa pressure. Compared with previously
developed grippers, the hybrid gripper grasped heavy objects
such as a heat gun and the duct tape with increased bending
speed; notably, the operating pressure conditions were sim-
ilar to those used in previous studies [3], [24]. The hybrid
gripper was able to grasp different objects with the increased
fingertip force without the need for complicated control algo-
rithms. It was verified that different objects with large weights
were grasped with simple inflation of the hybrid grippers, com-
pared with the mechanisms used in conventional SPA grippers
[3], [7], [24].
Fig. 9. Lifting force measurement: (a) Experimental setup for measuring
the displacement and the lifting force with the motion capture system and
F/T sensor, (b) lifting force of the developed hybrid gripper depending on the B. Application for the Teleoperation System
different operating pressure.
We tested the developed hybrid gripper with a teleoperation
system; these systems require light and compact components for
D. Lifting Force Measurement
mobility. The hybrid gripper uses a small pneumatic component
The maximum lifting force was also measured for the devel- with low pressure and flow rate to exert a large lifting force.
oped hybrid gripper with the hybrid PneuNets. The lifting force Thus, the hybrid gripper offers high actuation speeds without
of the gripper indicates the maximum lifting weight for grasping the need for a bulky pump motor or complex any complicated
objects. The experimental setup for lifting force measurements control algorithms for actuation. The pneumatic system for the
is shown in Fig. 9(a). A spherical dummy object was grasped by hybrid gripper (Fig. 11(a)) consisted of two pneumatic pumps
the hybrid gripper, and the gripper was moved upward manually (DAP-370A) connected in parallel to enhance the flow rate, as
at a slow speed (about 10 mm/s) until it failed to grasp under well as a pressure sensor and solenoid valves to inflate the hybrid
different pressure (20, 40, 60, and 80 kPa). The lifting force and gripper.
displacement of the hybrid gripper were measured with the F/T As shown in Fig. 11(b)–(d), several objects were grasped
sensor and a motion capture system (Prime 17, Optitrack [23]). with the teleoperated hybrid gripper and moved into the basket.
Fig. 9(b) shows the lifting weight as a function of operat- The teleoperation system, which uses a robot arm with seven
ing pressure. The displacement when the gripper released the degrees of freedom, was operated by the motion of the operator.
object increased in proportion to the applied pressure. Due to The motion was measured with a wearable sensor system and
the increased friction between the surface of the gripper and finger motion measurement system [25]. An institutional review
the object, the displacement of the gripper showed the perturba- board (IRB) approved for human operation (UNISTIRB-17-28-
tion (Fig. 9(b)). The maximum lifting force was about 28.7 N, A approved). The baskets containing objects, which weighed in
which showed an enhanced lifting force under similar pressure 1.25 kg, were carried by the gripper. A detailed demonstration
loadings [3], [10]. is shown in a supplementary video.
72 IEEE ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION LETTERS, VOL. 4, NO. 1, JANUARY 2019
Fig. 11. Application of the hybrid gripper for teleoperation system: (a) compact pneumatic system, grasping (b) the tape (200 g), (c) the bowl (300 g), (d) the
box (150 g), (e) the baskets containing all objects (1.3 kg).
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