Blue Gripper: A Robust, Low-Cost, and Force-Controlled Robot Hand

Recent trends in robotic manipulation have highlighted the need for force-controlled grippers that are not only robust to repeated contacts with the environment, but also low in cost. This paper presents the Blue Gripper, a simple parallel-jaw gripper focused on cost and reliability. The proposed hand weighs 660 grams, has a throw of 120 mm, and can apply up to 150 N of force. It is designed to be passively backdrivable, enabling accurate feedforward force control, reducing cost and complexity. In addition to detailing the gripper’s design and comparing it to other available options, this paper also quantifies the gripper’s backdrivability, robustness, and force-control characteristics. All design files have been open-sourced and can be found at https://berkeleyopengrippers.github.io.