In-hand Manipulation Exploiting Bending and Compression Deformations of Caterpillar-Locomotion-Inspired Fingers

This paper presents a novel method of realizing in-hand manipulation inspired by the peristaltic motion of a large-sized caterpillar. The sharp contrast between the proposed soft-bodied finger and the conventional hard/rigid robotic ones is peristaltic motion with compression and bending deformations. The design is based on the biological fact that large-size caterpillars (e.g., Bombyx mori) utilize bending and compression/extension of the body to produce crawling locomotion. Exploiting the multi-modal deformations, we demonstrated that the prototype hand comprising two proposed fingers could rotate and transport grasped objects. We also observed that the time gap of two-finger motion is required to stabilize in-hand manipulation. The design can provide new insights into designing a gripper inspired by soft-bodied creatures.