A Soft Robotic Gripper With a Belt Loop Actuated Adhesion Design for Gentle Handling of Fragile Object

Abstract

This study presents a soft gripper incorporating a novel belt loop actuated adhesion design, offering a comprehensive solution for the fabrication, variable-scale actuation, and contact sensing of directional adhesives. The solution facilitates high-resolution control of directional adhesives with relatively low device requirements. On this basis, the gripper adopts a minimal interaction force actuation strategy, thereby enabling the maximum gentleness in handling objects. The gripper has demonstrated its non-destructiveness and efficiency on various fragile flat objects. Additionally, the sensing capabilities for adhesive pairs allow it to percept and handle unlocated objects.