A Methodology for early design specifications of robotic grippers

The objective of this article is to present a comprehensive task analysis methodology that can provide guidelines for the design of dexterous robotic grippers. This methodology combines a human-centered gesture analysis and an object-centered grasp stability analysis. The former relies on a careful examination of a human operator’s hands gestures while performing a specific process, providing designers with tools that help specifying the number of fingers, the number of degrees of freedom, and the placement of tactile sensors. The latter exploits a grasp quality metric to compute the efforts required to handle the involved objects, providing guidelines for the specification of the actuation system. This approach is exemplified by defining technical specifications for the design of a multi-fingered robotic gripper intended to perform the tasks involved in a sterility testing process.