Topology optimization of a cable-driven soft robotic gripper
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INDUSTRIAL APPLICATION PAPER
Topology optimization of a cable-driven soft robotic gripper Rixin Wang1 · Xianmin Zhang1
· Benliang Zhu1 · Hongchuan Zhang1 · Bicheng Chen1 · Haonan Wang1
Received: 17 December 2019 / Revised: 23 March 2020 / Accepted: 22 April 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Improving the functionality of soft continuum manipulators to expand their application space has always been an important development direction for soft robotics. It remains very challenging to calculate the deformations of soft materials and predict the basic structure of soft fingers under complex objective functions and constraints. This work develops a cable-driven soft robotic gripper with multi-input and multi-output using topology optimization considering geometric nonlinearity, which not only performs adaptive grasping but also enables finer manipulations such as rotating or panning the target. A scheme that can describe adaptive grasping behavior is proposed, which converts the contact between the clamping surface and the object into a boundary condition to circumvent complex contact nonlinearities. An additive hyperelasticity technique is used to overcome numerical instabilities, and the finite element analysis is performed in ANSYS. Numerical simulations and experimental results are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the optimization algorithm and to illustrate the application potential of the proposed gripper. Keywords Soft gripper · Topology optimization · Multi-input and multi-output · Adaptive grasping
1 Introduction Manipulator is a typical end effector in robotic systems for capturing and manipulating objects. Compared to conventional rigid grippers, soft grippers made of materials with a Young’s modulus close to biological tissue exhibit unique advantages when grasping objects (Rus and Tolley 2015; Laschi et al. 2016). The natural softness imparted by the soft material allows robotics to maintain sufficient flexibility and adaptability during interaction with humans and the surrounding environment. Inspired by various
Responsible Editor: Somanath Nagendra Xianmin Zhang
zhangxm@scut.edu.cn Benliang Zhu
meblzhu@scut.edu.cn Rixin Wang wangrixin239@gmail.com 1
Guangdong Key Laboratory of Precision Equipment and Manufacturing Technology, School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, People’s Republic of China
biological forms, soft continuum manipulators based on cable-driven (Renda et al. 2014; Manti et al. 2015; Chen et al. 2018), pneumatic actuator (Ilievski et al. 2011; Peng et al. 2019; Zhang et al. 2018a) and electroactive polymer techniques (Shian et al. 2015; Wang et al. 2019a) have been developed. However, it remains a very challenging issue to design and optimize soft robotic grippers to improve their performance. Theoretically, soft materials have infinite degrees of freedom, allowing soft robotics to provide continuous bending, torsion, and other deformability (Odhner et al. 2014;
