Soft robotic gripper displays light touch with a twist

News

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a soft robotic gripper capable of delicate tasks such as screwing in a light bulb.

The gripper consists of three fingers, each with three pneumatically-activated chambers, allowing multiple degrees of movement when air pressure is applied. In addition, each finger is covered with a smart, sensing skin made of silicone rubber embedded with conducting carbon nanotubes. Sheets of the rubber are slipped over the flexible fingers to cover them like skin.

As the fingers flex, the conductivity of the nanotubes changes, allowing the skin to record and detect when the fingers are moving and coming into contact with an object. The data the sensors generate is transmitted to a control board, which collates the information to create a 3D model of the object. According to the UC San Diego team, it’s a process similar to a CT scan, where 2D image slices from a 3D picture.

robotic gripper

(Credit: UC San Diego)

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