Design and Implementation of a Multi-Function Gripper for Grasping General Objects

Featured Application A multi-function grasping system is developed to grasp various objects in different working environments, such as piece-picking in warehouses and fulfillment centers. Abstract The development of a reliable pick-and-place system for industrial robotics is facing an urgent demand because many manual-labor works, such as piece-picking in warehouses and fulfillment centers tend toward automation. This paper presents an integrated gripper that combines a linkage-driven underactuated gripper with a suction gripping system for picking up a variety of objects in different working environments. The underactuated gripper consists of two fingers, and each finger has three degrees of freedom that are obtained by stacking one five-bar mechanism over one double parallelogram. Furthermore, each finger is actuated by two motors, both of which can be installed at the base owing to the special architecture of the proposed robotic finger. A suction cup is used to grasp objects in narrow spaces and cluttered environments. The combination of the suction and traditional linkage-driven grippers allows stable and reliable grasping under different working environments. Finally, practical experiments using a wide range of objects and under different grasping scenarios are performed to demonstrate the grasping capability of the integrated gripper.