Development and Testing of the Mechatronic Gripper with Two Fingers

The article describes the problem of developing a novel gripper with two fingers using a differential gear. In the proposed solution, the fingers maintain parallel orientation to each other throughout the entire working area, consisting compact design of the gripper itself. The mechanism has two degrees of freedom, one for closing fingers and second for rotating the gripper. The novel approach is the way of drive transmission by using a differential gear connected to two DC motors located behind the gripper mechanism, which contributes to the reduction of its dimensions near the working area. There are force sensors on the fingers of the gripper allowing to grasp the object with a given force. A controller has been integrated in the gripper, which implements the developed control algorithm, including the coupling of the motors in the differential drive and feedback from the force measurement carried out by force sensors. Geometry has been selected for the proposed gripper scheme. The mechanism simulation tests were carried out in a program for dynamic analysis of multibody systems. The prototype of the gripper was assembled. Structure parts were made in FDM technology.