Description
This article presents a new design concept for grippers used in assembly, which enlarges the range of parts while maintaining the reliability. Such grippers are of interest as soon as robots can accomplish assembly tasks in the presence of geometric uncertainties. The design task is approached by morphological analysis, where candidate combinations are elaborated at first. From the set of viable combinations, one concept is selected, designed in detail and realized as a lab demonstrator. The presented gripper features three jaws, where two of them are actuated by servo-motors via belt drives. The third jaw consists of an inflatable / evacuable rubber pillow filled with granulate, a feature which lets the jaw adapt to arbitrary shapes. Practical experiments showed that the pillow is a key feature, which gives the ability to grip many items of different shape and size reliably.
