The development of a Gesture Controlled Soft Robot gripping mechanism

Abstract

Electro-mechanical and other conventional type grippers are often used in the industry to pick up and handle materials. In many applications the conventional type grippers are not effective enough to handle fragile and soft materials. In this research an elastomer based soft finger mechanism is introduced with hand gesture controlling as a gripping mechanism. Solid Works design of the mold was 3D printed and then using standard manufacturing procedures the Soft Fingers were developed. The Leap Motion Controller and Processing IDE were used to track three fingers and wrist of the hand to control Soft Fingers through the pneumatic control board. A Flex Sensor was used to get the feedback of the amount bent of the soft finger. Hand gestures and Soft fingers were interfaced by an Arduino controller. The testing was performed with three Soft Fingers that connected to imitate Thumb, Index and Middle fingers of hand. The final design was able to imitate the fingers but required more fine tuning to apply for a complex area.