Low overhead manipulation of bound book pages

Abstract

The robotic manipulation of flexible materials such as paper remains a challenging area of research. Our previous work has focused on the nondestructive manipulation of bound paper as found in books. This article describes a new approach to the one-sided, nonprehensile paper manipulation problem in which we use the polymer polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to create a mechanical bond between the paper and robot manipulator. We have fabricated and tested several complete page-flipping robots that make use of this technique. The current robot has manipulated 10,720 bound pages with an error rate of 0.056%. Future research would focus on refining the design for use in industry.