Dynamic friction closure

Abstract

This paper newly proposes dynamic friction closure, under which a moving object is completely stopped within a predetermined length through the work due to Coulomb friction between an object and a gripper. There are two conditions for achieving it: The geometrical condition, ensuring the robot motion to meet with an object at an appropriate catching point, and frictional stopping capability, ensuring the moving distance of object is less than the predetermined distance under a limited grasping force. Through the simple analysis on catching a 2D circular object by a parallel jaw gripper, we newly found that even under the same total energy of object, the distance changes depending upon the ratio between initial rotational and translational velocity. For a 3D sphere object, the maximum moving distance is provided with the initial kinetic energy.