FEM Based Soft Robotic Gripper Design For Seaweed Farming

Seaweeds are large algae that grow on rocky shorelines, in shallow coastal waters, and in marine environments. It plays a major role in marine ecosystems and is abundantly available in the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere region. However, some species of seaweed clash with coral reefs and damage them severely due to the release of hydrophobic allelochemicals. Conventional methods are often labor-intensive, which results in adverse environmental effects. The solution to this problem is to involve underwater vehicles for seaweed farming. But the existing underwater vehicles need some soft materials to handle the targeted seaweeds carefully, without affecting the coral reefs and other species in the sea.This study aims to develop a soft robotic gripper with pneumatic to grasp seaweed, which is abundantly available under the sea water nearer to coral reefs. The novel soft pneumatic robotic gripper design has been done for 8 chambers using Ansys Finite Element Analysis software. Gripper deformation analysis is carried out for different pressure levels to understand the behavior of the hyperelastic material.