Design and Evaluation of an Underactuated Adaptive Finger for Parallel Grippers

Adaptive grippers are often used to fulfil the task required of grasping or manipulation with a variety of geometry attributes. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of underactuated adaptive fingers for the common parallel grippers. A design methodology is proposed to define contacts and grasping stability. A simplified adaptive finger has also been designed, assembled and tested. The developed adaptive finger is able to perform encompassing and pinch grasps. The experiments show that the fingers are able to form three to six contact points for encompassing grasps and two contact points for pinch grasps.