Experimental Investigation on the Handling Stability of Vacuum Grippers with Multiple Suction Cups

Vacuum grippers are widely used for handling tasks in manufacturing, due to their simple design and robustness. Unfortunately, their dimensioning often results in oversizing due to limited knowledge about the suction cups, stemming from insufficient insight into how they perform in practice. Recent studies have shown the potential for energy savings through precise dimensioning, which allows for more sustainable production. However, research in this field has been dominated by investigating the behavior of single suction cups, although industrial applications typically involve gripper systems with multiple suction cups. When multiple cups are considered, optimization algorithms can be applied to improve the positioning of individual suction cups to ensure more stable grasps. Here, heuristics decide which parameters must be varied to achieve an optimized suction cup distribution. Subsequently, there is a lack of systematic investigations on the influence of different positions of the suction cups. In addition, the influence of the handling task, including the robot’s acceleration, has received limited attention. To address this gap, we conducted experiments to evaluate the influence of key design parameters. These include the offset between the workpiece’s center of gravity and the point of force application, as well as varying suction cup sizes and their geometric arrangement.