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Robotic Materials Article 2023

A Soft, Fast and Versatile Electrohydraulic Gripper with Capacitive Object Size Detection

A Soft, Fast and Versatile Electrohydraulic Gripper with Capacitive Object Size Detection YouTube video
Robotic Materials
Zachary Yoder
  • Doctoral Researcher
Robotic Materials
Daniela Macari
  • Doctoral Researcher
Robotic Materials
Ingemar Schmidt
  • Doctoral Researcher
Robotic Materials, Physical Intelligence
Christoph Keplinger
Managing Director

Soft robotic grippers achieve increased versatility and reduced complexity through intelligence embodied in their flexible and conformal structures. The most widely used soft grippers are pneumatically driven; they are simple and effective but require bulky air compressors that limit their application space and external sensors or computationally expensive vision systems for pick verification. In this study, a multi-material architecture for self-sensing electrohydraulic bending actuators is presented that enables a new class of highly versatile and reconfigurable soft grippers that are electrically driven and feature capacitive pick verification and object size detection. These elec-trohydraulic grippers are fast (step input results in finger closure in 50 ms), draw low power (6.5 mW per finger to hold grasp), and can pick a wide variety of objects with simple binary electrical control. Integrated high-voltage driving electronics are presented that greatly increase the application space of the grippers and make them readily compatible with commercially available robotic arms.

Author(s): Zachary Yoder and Daniela Macari and Gavriel Kleinwaks and Ingemar Schmidt and Eric Acome and Christoph Keplinger
Links:
Journal: Advanced Functional Materials
Volume: 23
Number (issue): 3
Pages: 2209080
Year: 2023
Project(s):
BibTeX Type: Article (article)
DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202209080
State: Published
Electronic Archiving: grant_archive

BibTeX 

@article{Yoder22-AFM-Gripper,
  title = {A Soft, Fast and Versatile Electrohydraulic Gripper with Capacitive Object Size Detection},
  journal = {Advanced Functional Materials},
  abstract = {Soft robotic grippers achieve increased versatility and reduced complexity through intelligence embodied in their flexible and conformal structures. The most widely used soft grippers are pneumatically driven; they are simple and effective but require bulky air compressors that limit their application space and external sensors or computationally expensive vision systems for pick verification. In this study, a multi-material architecture for self-sensing electrohydraulic bending actuators is presented that enables a new class of highly versatile and reconfigurable soft grippers that are electrically driven and feature capacitive pick verification and object size detection. These elec-trohydraulic grippers are fast (step input results in finger closure in 50 ms), draw low power (6.5 mW per finger to hold grasp), and can pick a wide variety of objects with simple binary electrical control. Integrated high-voltage driving electronics are presented that greatly increase the application space of the grippers and make them readily compatible with commercially available robotic arms.},
  volume = {23},
  number = {3},
  pages = {2209080},
  year = {2023},
  author = {Yoder, Zachary and Macari, Daniela and Kleinwaks, Gavriel and Schmidt, Ingemar and Acome, Eric and Keplinger, Christoph},
  doi = {10.1002/adfm.202209080}
}