Abstract
Nowadays, automated production systems are rapidly changing to increase flexibility. However, robot end effectors are usually designed to accomplish specific tasks and to handle a limited family of parts, and flexibility can only be obtained by using tool changing systems. The main drawbacks of such systems are increased cost of automation and reduced productivity. This paper presents the functional design of a flexible robotic gripper, capable of adaptively changing its aperture (grasp width) to different handling demands, without affecting the cycle time of the production system, as it can be actuated in hidden time. The solution proposed consists of (1) an electrically-actuated mechanism for adapting aperture, which allows to satisfy the flexibility requirements; (2) a pneumatically-actuated mechanism for open/close operations, which ensures comparably fast motion of jaws if compared to traditional, non-adaptive robotic grippers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In the paper operator \(\varDelta \) indicates a rotation or a displacement due to the releasing movement of the gripper, i.e., from the configuration of jaws closed (grasp) to open (release), computed as \(\text {open} - \text {closed}\).
References
Audet C, Dennis JE Jr (2003) Analysis of generalized pattern searches. SIAM J Optim 13(3):889–903
Boschetti G (2016) A picking strategy for circular conveyor tracking. J Intell Robot Syst 81(2):241–255
Bruzzone L, Bozzini G (2010) A flexible joints microassembly robot with metamorphic gripper. Assembly Autom 30(3):240–247
Canali C, Cannella F, Chen F, Hauptman T, Sofia G, Caldwell D, Eytan A (2014) High reconfigurable robotic gripper for flexible assembly. In: ASME 2014 international design engineering technical conferences and computers and information in engineering conference, pp V05BT08A019–V05BT08A019. American Society of Mechanical Engineers
Chaudhari N, Shinde VB (2014) Recent trends in robotic end of arm tooling (gripper). Int J Mech Eng Robot Res 3(2):171
Deep K, Singh KP, Kansal ML, Mohan C (2009) A real coded genetic algorithm for solving integer and mixed integer optimization problems. Appl Math Comput 212(2):505–518
Finetto C, Faccio M, Rosati G, Rossi A (2014) Mixed-model sequencing optimization for an automated single-station fully flexible assembly. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 70(5–8):797–812
International federation of robotics, world robotics 2015 industrial robots. http://www.ifr.org/industrial-robots/statistics
Kolda TG, Lewis RM, Torczon V (2003) Optimization by direct search: new perspectives on some classical and modern methods. SIAM Rev 45(3):385–482
Monkman GJ, Hesse S, Steinmann R, Schunk H (2007) Robot Grippers. Wiley-VCH
Qingsong X (2015) Design of asymmetric flexible micro-gripper mechanism based on flexure hinges. Advances in Mechanical Engineering 7(6):1687814015590331
Rosati G, Boschetti G, Biondi A, Rossi A (2009) On-line dimensional measurement of small components on the eyeglasses assembly line. Opt Lasers Eng 47(3–4):320–328
Robotics 2020 multi-annual roadmap for robotics in europe, horizon 2020 call ict-2016 (ict-25 & ict-26). http://www.eu-robotics.net
Rosati G, Faccio M, Carli A, Rossi A (2013) Fully flexible assembly systems (f-fas): a new concept in flexible automation. Assembly Autom 33(1):8–21
Rosati G, Faccio M, Finetto C, Carli A (2013) Modeling and optimization of fully flexible assembly systems (f-fas). Assembly Autom 33(2):156–174
Rosati G, Oscari F, Barbazza L, Faccio M (2016) Throughput maximization and buffer design of robotized flexible production systems with feeder renewals and priority rules. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 85(1–4):891–907
Sam R, Nefti S (2011) A novel, flexible and multi-functional handling device based on bernoulli principle. In: 2011 IEEE international conference on system engineering and technology (ICSET), pp. 166–171. IEEE
Sandor GN, Erdman AG (1997) Advanced mechanism design: analysis and synthesis. Prentice Hall
Tavakoli M, Marques L, De Almeida AT (2013) Flexirigid, a novel two phase flexible gripper. In: 2013 IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS), pp 5046–5051. IEEE
Udupa G, Sreedharan P, Sai Dinesh P, Kim D (2014) Asymmetric bellow flexible pneumatic actuator for miniature robotic soft gripper. J Robot 2014
Wolfson W, Gordon SJ (1997) Designing a parts feeding system for maximum flexibility. Assembly Autom 17(2):116–121
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the great contribution of Andrea Carli to the project, in collaboration with Prof. J. Michael McCarthy of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Irvine.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Oscari, F., Minto, S., Rosati, G. (2017). Functional Design of a Robotic Gripper for Adaptive Robotic Assembly. In: Boschetti, G., Gasparetto, A. (eds) Advances in Italian Mechanism Science. Mechanisms and Machine Science, vol 47. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48375-7_28
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48375-7_28
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48374-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48375-7
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)