An Untethered Soft Robotic Gripper with Adjustable Grasping Modes and Force Feedback

In this paper, we propose a three-finger soft robotic gripper, which adopts an untethered and under-actuated design with simple structure and easy operation. The rotation of two servomotors is used to control the positions of the fingers, which provides the fingers with adjustable grasping modes and improves the adaptation of the gripper to objects with different shapes. A pressure sensor is integrated at the end of the finger to provide force feedback, which is used to detect the contact force when grasping the object and enables the gripper to provide the proper grasping force. The experimental section characterizes the bending of the soft robotic finger, and the gripper is integrated at the end of a collaborative robotic arm to demonstrate its adjustable grasping posture and force feedback function. The soft robotic gripper is expected to be used in a variety of scenarios, such as service robot, food industry or garbage sorting.