Design of Sub-Centimetre Underactuated Compliant Grippers

Abstract

This paper proposes a methodology for the design of a sub-centimetre underactuated compliant gripper. The gripper is optimized in order to maintain a proper force distribution on the phalanges and to avoid the deformation of soft objects. In order to keep the design simple and to limit the complexity of the control, each finger is based on a planar five-bar linkage. The five-bar mechanism is a well known and efficient underactuated mechanism. In this work, the revolute joints are replaced by flexible hinges in order to allow the miniaturization of the mechanism and make it easy to clean and sterilize. The behaviour of the prototypes built shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.