Soft gripper with electro-adhesion based on dielectric elastomer actuator

Abstract

To grasp and move an object, the development of dexterous gripper is conducted actively in the robotics field. However, conventional gripper, which is made up of hard materials, needs a complicated actuating part and can be applied to the limited shape of target objects. To solve this limitation, the development of soft gripper, which consists of soft materials, is essential. In this paper, a soft gripper is designed by using electro-active polymer and electro-adhesive pad. The main stream of the research is to find the most effective structure of soft gripper based on dielectric elastomer actuator. We designed various type of soft finger with dielectric elastomer actuator, and found the most appropriate structure for the soft gripper. Also, the performance of the electro-adhesive pad is analyzed to enhance the grasping ability, and the optimized electro-adhesion pattern is found. By combining the dielectric elastomer and electro-adhesion pad, the optimized unimorph-type soft finger is developed. It has a simple structure and lightweight, which is the strength of the dielectric elastomer and electro-adhesion pad. The experiment gripper, which is composed of two soft fingers, can grasp objects up to 470 g. It means very high gripping capability since the moving part of the soft gripper weights 6.2 g. In conclusion, the results of this research means that the soft gripper can be applied to various fields, due to its high grasping capability and simple structure.