Variable Stiffness Improves Safety and Performance in Soft Robotics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a variable stiffness soft gripper that dynamically adjusts its stiffness rapidly, enhancing safety and performance in industrial grasping tasks through innovative pressure regulation mechanisms.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel monolithic soft gripper design with rapid stiffness modulation capabilities using pressure control, improving industrial grasping safety and efficiency.

Findings

Stiffness can be modulated by 125% within 250ms.

Variable stiffness improves grasping safety.

Enhanced performance in industrial applications.

Abstract

This paper proposes a new variable stiffness soft gripper that enables high-performance grasping tasks in industrial applications. The design of the proposed monolithic soft gripper includes a middle bellow and two side bellows (i.e., fingers). The positions of the fingers are regulated by adjusting the negative pressure in the middle bellow actuator via an on-off controller. The stiffness of the soft gripper is modulated by controlling the positive pressure in the fingers through the use of a proportional air-pressure regulator. It is experimentally shown that the proposed soft gripper can modulate its stiffness by 125% within 250ms. It is also shown that the variable stiffness soft gripper can help improve the safety and performance of grasping tasks in industrial applications.