Underactuated 3-finger robotic gripper for grasping fabrics

Koustoumpardis, Panagiotis Ν.; Nastos, Kostas X.; Aspragathos, Nikos Α.

doi:10.1109/raad.2014.7002271

Cited by 33 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Murakami and Hasegawa [22] have presented a gripper with a human-like fingertip and a complex mechanism. Koustoumpardis et al [23] performed a research on an underactuated robotic gripper that can successfully grasp, transfer, and dewrinkle for simple fabric materials.…”

Section: Contemporary Handling Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Model-based Design and Simulation of a Soft Robotic Gripper for Fabric Material Handling

Wang

Urbanic²

2021

Preprint

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Fabric and textile materials are widely used in many industrial applications, especially in automotive, aviation, and consumer goods. Currently, there is a lack of automatic solutions for rapid and effective fabric handling operations that can be expanded to various applications, causing economic loss, workplace safety issues, and process bottlenecks. As a bio-inspired novel technology, soft robotic grippers provide new opportunities for the automation of fabric handling tasks. In this research, an elastomer-based tendon-actuated soft gripper for fabric pick and place tasks is developed through a model-based design approach. Based on finite element analysis, the gripper design is simulated, modified, and validated. Multiple design variables and their impacts are studied. Detailed motion patterns of the underactuated structure are obtained. After the design is established, a prototype is fabricated trough additive manufacturing and overmolding processes to physically test the functionality of the gripper and further validate the simulation results.

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Section: Contemporary Handling Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Model-based Design and Simulation of a Soft Robotic Gripper for Fabric Material Handling

Wang

Urbanic²

2021

Preprint

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“…Gripper designs based on contact and friction can be more generic, but those specially designed for handling clothes are much less common due to the unique challenges for grasping and manipulation of textiles. Some examples include [10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. However, most of these grippers solve only partial problems or particular specific tasks on cloth manipulation.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some more general grippers for cloth manipulation appear in [11,12]. Ono et al in [12] present a humanoid hand with 2 fingers, a thumb and a palm.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is one of the few designs that can realize different types of grasps on cloth, at the expense of resulting in a very complex design close to a humanoid hand. The design in [11] is an underactuated hand with a simpler and smart design, optimized for grasping clothes that are laying flat on a table. However, it cannot realize other important tasks like flattening a cloth on a table.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Versatile Gripper for Cloth Manipulation

Donaire

Borràs

Alenyà

et al. 2020

IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett.

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Cloth manipulation has been mostly advancing in perception and modeling methods for cloth state estimation and grasping point detection. In comparison, less attention has been put on end-effector design. Indeed, most implementations use a parallel gripper that can only perform pinch grasps. Instead, a more versatile set of possible grasp types could ease many tasks by providing more support to certain parts of the object, as well as make feasible tasks that become very complex when executed with only pinch grasps. We present a versatile gripper design which, besides the common open-close thumb+finger(s) feature, it has a couple of reconfiguration degrees of freedom that offer, first, a wide base plane to provide support and, second, variable friction surface on the thumb tip. Our gripper can execute a versatile set of grasps that ease some complex tasks such as pick and place folded clothes or fold in the air. In addition, the variable friction mechanism enables a more robust pinch-and-slide manipulation to trace cloth edges. Our evaluation shows the gripper potential to execute a wide variety of cloth manipulation tasks.

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“…As shown in Figure 1, in the near future, the fashion industry is expected to transform into the means of instant production and delivery of clothing designed and ordered by customers [4]. Research has been actively conducted in the field of automation of garment manufacturing for many years, particularly in robot gripping and automatic sewing systems [3,[5][6][7][8]. A robot-based sewing system named SEWBO (Sewbo, Inc., Seattle, WA, USA) sewed all the necessary seams of a T-shirt automatically using an industrial robot arm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementation of an Automated Manufacturing Process for Smart Clothing: The Case Study of a Smart Sports Bra

et al. 2021

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The garment manufacturing industry is a labor-intensive industry, with one of the slowest transitions to automation. Hence, it is essential to build a smart factory based on automated systems to improve productivity and allow responsive production in the market. In this study, the manufacturing processes for a smart sports bra were established and optimized using various automated machines. For this system, computer-based 3D virtual design software, a technical embroidery machine, an automatic cutting machine, an industrial robot arm with gripper, and an industrial pattern sewing machine were used. The design and materials of the sports bra were selected considering embroidery, cutting, robot gripping, and sewing processes. In addition, conductive thread and light-emitting diode (LED) sequences were used to implement smart functions to the sports bra. Transport of intermediate materials, work orders, and process conditions were optimized to improve the flexible connection of each process and the quality of the final product. This study suggests the concept of the automated manufacturing system that minimizes human intervention by connecting the processes needed to produce a smart sports bra using various automation equipment and programs already used in the industry.

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Underactuated 3-finger robotic gripper for grasping fabrics

Cited by 33 publications

References 2 publications

Model-based Design and Simulation of a Soft Robotic Gripper for Fabric Material Handling

Model-based Design and Simulation of a Soft Robotic Gripper for Fabric Material Handling

A Versatile Gripper for Cloth Manipulation

Implementation of an Automated Manufacturing Process for Smart Clothing: The Case Study of a Smart Sports Bra

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