Robotic gripping using soft finger tips

Abstract

This paper focuses on the grippers or end effectors that are attached with robots to interact with the environment. The analysis of the fundamental deformation of soft fingertips are discussed. In order to analyze the deformation effect, the dynamic relation of a five-fingered object manipulation using soft fingertips are explained. One way to grip the object with soft finger tips in a way that a viscoelastic material is attached at the tip of gripper. This viscoelastic material is then modelled as spring and damper and by including the friction between the finger tips and the object. We model this system using bond graph technique and then simulated in 20sim. Further we study the effects in variation of friction, damping and stiffness in simulation results, which shows that the deformation effect of soft fingertips during the gripping process is crucial for stable manipulation.