Towards Task-Specific Modular Gripper Fingers: Automatic Production of Fingertip Mechanics

The adaption of robotic assembly lines to new products is generally slow and costly, binding the economical usage of a single line to a few products manufactured in masses. An important time factor is the adaption of the assembly robot's gripper fingers to the new product components - since finger design, production, and mounting is done manually. In this letter, we introduce an approach for automatic task-specific fingertip production and application. Our system is potentially able to reduce the assembly line customization time mentioned above by automatically printing customized fingertips onto a pre-produced finger-base and storing them in a dedicated finger library before the product assembly process begins. The assembly robot can then autonomously load and use these produced and stored fingers for the designated manipulation task by utilizing a specially developed quick finger exchange system. The setup is experimentally validated by conducting automatic production of three different fingertips and executing grasp-stability tests as well as multiple pick- and insertion tasks, with and without position offsets - using these fingertips. The proposed approach, indeed, goes beyond fingertip production and serves as a foundation for a fully automatic fingertip design, production, and application pipeline.