Underactuated Finger Design for Flexible Grasping in Robotic Assembly

Abstract

At present-day manufacturing and assembly lines, fairly simple mechanism grippers are used. On the other hand, growing demand for customized products that are mass produced, require flexible, multipurpose grippers that are capable of grasping complex objects of different sizes and shapes. In order for robotic hand to be industry acceptable it needs to be robust, easy to control and most importantly it needs to be affordable price-wise. With that in mind concept of multifingered underactuated robotic hand appears as a good candidate to be optimal, general purpose solution. Underactuation as a concept allows robotic hands to grip arbitrary shaped objects without the need for complex control and sensory systems. Also, with less actuators than degrees of freedom multifingered underactuated robotic hand is more affordable and from robot arm carrying capacity standpoint, actuators with less weight allows robotic systems to move faster or to carry heavier loads. For this research linkage driven underactuated mechanisms are chosen because of their rigidity and that trait makes control system more reliable and easier to make thus making whole robotic system more robust and reliable. This paper presents some aspects of design and grasping force analysis of three degrees of freedom (3-DoF) underactuated robotic finger with linkage driven mechanism for CMSysLab Robotic Hand.