Design of a Fast Soft Gripper for UAV Based on a Line-Driven Adaptive Entanglement Mechanism

The design of grippers plays a pivotal role in achieving diverse grasping functionalities for cooperative tasks involving unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). However, realizing stable, efficient, and rapid adaptive grasping under the constraints of limited space and payload capacity of UAVs while fully leveraging their speed and agility remains a significant challenge. Here, we propose a novel ultra-fast, ultra-light adaptive active entangling soft gripper design. The design employs a line-driven mechanism, utilizing 12 soft tubes to achieve tight entanglement around objects of varying sizes and structures across different media, enabling adaptive and stable grasping. The lightweight gripper can be securely mounted on UAVs, ensuring consistent stability during grasping operations. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed design achieves a grasping success rate of nearly 100% by tightly entangling objects across various media and accomplishes rapid and stable grasping in collaborative tasks through a UAV platform.