The Mag-Gripper: A Soft-Rigid Gripper Augmented With an Electromagnet to Precisely Handle Clothes

Abstract

This letter introduces Mag-Gripper, a novel robotic gripper specifically designed for autonomous clothing manipulation. It is capable of improving grasp repeatability, and precision, compensating uncertainties in the target grasping locations. We propose to approach the autonomous clothing manipulation challenge by involving a suitable magnetic force. For this reason, Mag-Gripper is equipped with an electromagnet capable of interacting with small metal parts properly placed on the garment to be grasped. Electromagnet exploitation is not a novelty in literature, but our design innovation consists in embedding the electromagnet in the structure of a jaw gripper. In so doing, we revisit a classic end-effector type, corresponding to the simplest representation of a hand capable of opposability, allowing easily controllable devices to perform grasps similar to the human pinch grasp. Mag-Gripper can find applications either in Research labs investigating Machine Learning-based clothing manipulation techniques either in companies having to manage a large amount of returns, either in home setting scenarios.