Design and grip force control of dual-motor drive electric gripper with parallel fingers

Abstract

This paper designs a novel electric gripper with parallel fingers and each finger has a set of an independent drive motor and integrates a force sensor. The gripper with the flexibility of mechanical structure and control is mounted in the end of an industrial robot, and a flexible grip test platform is constructed based on an embedded controller. Prarllel position-force control algorithm is proposed to be used for the gripper, and dual fingers can be individually position-controlled or force-controlled. The grip force, position and speed can be set individually so that the clamping centre and strokes can be programmed to control with improved dexterity. It can make the resulting grip force rapidly track desired force with low overshoots to a tolerable limit and be quickly stabilized within an acceptable range. Robots grip experiments show that the gripper can provide flexible grip, improve the flexibility and reduce damages to the fragile and deformable objects during dynamic grip process.