Engineers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have built a robotic system – or robotic fingers – that they say can grip objects ranging from soft and delicate to bulky and heavy. The robotic hand, which is designed to be shapeable, is being touted as meeting the needs of sectors such as vertical farming, food assembly and high-speed consumer goods packaging.
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These industries have increasingly automated more of their operations, but currently require manual handling for some processes, according to the NUS. The natural dexterity of the human hand is very important for these tasks.
Rave Yeow, an associate professor from the NUS Advanced Robotics Centre and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, said: “The shape, texture, weight and size of an object influence how we choose to grip it. This is one of the main reasons why many industries still rely heavily on human labour to package and handle delicate objects.”
To address this, robotic grippers can be built with three or four 3D printed fingers that are soft and flexible and mounted on a reconfigurable base. The fingers are air-powered and armed with a locking mechanism that allows for adjustment of the level of stiffness.
The robotic system is guided by computer vision and deep learning technologies so that it can recognize the type of objects and determine their orientation. It then automatically decides how to best select and place the objects to reduce the need for heavy human intervention.
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According to NUS, the handle system can be configured “on demand” and can be fitted with three handle options that cover different uses.
GourmetGrip, for example, is suitable for granular tasks, such as handling delicate bite-sized foods or products that are prone to damage, including tofu, and packaging them in take-out boxes. Described as a “soft-hand operation,” this feature can support different grips and work within different space constraints.
Mounted on an industrial robotic arm, the GourmetGrip could pick and place food at a speed comparable to that of a human and consistently around the clock, the NUS said. The university added that this system operation gave a 23% improvement in gripping efficiency compared to other commercially available grippers, gripping objects faster and with greater precision.
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GourmetGrip is currently able to grip more than 50 types of food, including pudding, sliced cakes, and fruit.
Another gripper option, the Universal Soft Gripper (UnisoGrip), is suitable for handling packaged products along assembly lines, particularly when these products are in the final stage of being boxed for shipment. This option, which is expected to be the most flexible in terms of application, can significantly expand the range of grip, NUS said. The system is larger compared to the GourmetGrip and handles objects up to 30 cm wide and weighing up to 3 kg.
Information source: zdnet.com
