Introducing Environmental Constraints to Grasping Strategies for Paper-Like Flexible Materials Using a Soft Gripper

TL;DR

This paper explores how environmental constraints can improve grasping strategies for paper-like flexible materials using a soft robotic gripper, with experimental validation and analysis.

Contribution

It introduces systematic grasping strategies that exploit environmental constraints and analyzes their mechanical and kinematic models for flexible materials.

Findings

Proposed grasping strategies tailored for paper-like materials.

Experimental evaluation of grasping force and success rate.

Identification of workspaces and characteristics for different strategies.

Abstract

Robotic manipulation of flexible objects is widely required in both industrial and service applications. Among such objects, paper-like materials exhibit distinct mechanical characteristics compared to cloth, being more sensitive to compressive stress, where minor variations in physical properties can significantly affect grasping. This study systematically investigates grasping strategies for paper-like materials using a universal soft gripper by exploiting environmental constraints. Based on manipulation primitives employed in existing grasping strategies, we proposed systematic grasping strategies for flexible materials by exploiting environmental constraints and analyzed their mechanical and kinematic models. To investigate the influence of materials and working conditions on grasping, an evaluation system for measuring grasping force and success rate was defined and experimentally evaluated. Finally, we summarized the specific workspaces and characteristics of different strategies that can satisfy various task requirements and lead to potential applications in household service robots for grasping planar flexible objects.