Compact water pump and its application to self-contained soft robot hand for vegetable factory

摘要

As the number of agricultural workers is decreasing, there are a lot of demands on the robotics automation of agricultural tasks, including the automation of repacking and shipping in vegetable factories. A soft robot hand is suitable for such tasks because of its less damaging to vegetables and adaptability to variety in size and weight of vegetables. However, most of soft robotic hands are actuated by the air pressure, and the output force is not sufficient for heavy vegetables that are often dealt with in a vegetable factory. To solve this problem, we developed a prototype of a hydraulic soft robot hand in our previous research. Selecting an oil as the hydraulic source, the prototype was actuated by a compact built-in pump, we showed that the prototype could hold 2 or 3kg cabbage with 1MPa pressure control. In this paper, we develop a compact water pump that can generate maximum 3MPa, and update the prototype selecting the water as the hydraulic source. We experimentally show that the soft hand can grasp and hold a cabbages, assuming a real situation in a vegetable factory.