3D printed soft gripper for automatic lunch box packing

In this paper, we proposed a 3D printed soft robot gripper with modular design for lunch box packing. The gripper consists of a rigid base and three soft fingers. A snap-lock mechanism was designed for easy attach-detach assembly of the gripper without using screws. All components were 3D printed and the soft finger structure is based on the principle of fluidic elastomer actuator. Three finger designs, and soft gripper grasping and lifting deformable objects were investigated through finite element (FE) analysis and experiments. Results suggested that different finger designs yielded different curvature along the finger and generated different stress distribution once pressurized. The proposed gripper could grasp and lift objects with variable shapes and softnesses.