Design of a Soft Robotic Gripper for Improved Grasping with Suction Cups

Abstract

In this paper, a new design for a soft robotic gripper is proposed which combined humanoid fingers with bioinspired suction cups. The gripper is capable of reconfiguration of the fingers to allow multiple grasping strategies to be achieved. The grasping strategies implemented are cylindrical, spherical, and tip gripping of an object. Construction of the physical soft robotic gripper was implemented in hardware and software to allow for experimentation of the new design. Experiments of grasping objects of varied shape and weight were done ans results tabulated. The experiments gave a deeper understanding of the design choices impact on the ability of the gripper to perform pick and place tasks.