Delicate Fabric Handling Using a Soft Robotic Gripper With Embedded Microneedles

We propose a soft robotic gripper that can handle various types of fabrics with delicacy for applications in the field of garment manufacturing. The design was inspired by the adhesion mechanism of a parasitic fish called `lamprey'. The proposed gripper not only is able to pick up and hold a single sheet of fabric from a stack but also does not make any damages on it. In this work, we first modeled the holding force of the gripper and then experimentally evaluated its performance with different types of fabrics, in terms of the holding force and the response time. The experimental data showed a reasonable agreement with the predicted values by the model. The actuation time and the maximum holding force measured in the experiments were 0.32 seconds and 1.12 N, respectively. The gripper showed high success rates in picking up a single sheet of air permeable fabric, which was not possible by a commercial vacuum pad. It also showed durability in repeated motions of gripping test over 20,000 cycles. We believe the proposed gripper has a high potential in realizing smart manufacturing in garment industry.