Soft MRE Gripper: Preliminary Study

Soft robotics focuses on the imitation of the work of living organisms and mostly utilizes soft deformable materials for actuation or object manipulation tasks. Soft robots or grippers can be used for tasks which are beyond the reach of conventional rigid body ones. Recently, soft flexible robotic grippers have attracted research and engineering interest. A variety of materials and actuation technologies incl. magnetorheological (MR) materials have been used for developing grippers for grasping and object manipulation purposes. In this proof-of-concept study, the authors propose a magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) based gripper concept that deforms when subjected to magnetic field, thus adapting to objects of various shapes and sizes. With the prototype, a reduction in the closing area by a factor of four was achieved. To realize the assumed goals, a prototype of the gripper was designed, built, and tested, and its behaviour was evaluated, focusing on its adaptability and identification of the opening/closing current levels. Moreover, a contactless CV (computer vision)-based method was developed for the purpose of assessment of the prototype’s operation. The experiments involved the handling of cylindrical and cubic objects, respectively. The experimental results indicate that the operation is repeatable, and with no visible degradation of the flexible casing.