A Soft Pneumatic Gripper with Endoskeletons Resisting Out-of-Plane Bending

The established soft pneumatic grippers have the benefit of flexible and compliant gripping, but they cannot withstand lateral loads, due to low stiffness material. This paper proposes an endoskeleton gripper. action finger is performed by air chambers, gripping force transferred rigid within finger. in similar a wristwatch chain; hinge mechanism permits relative rotation working plane restricts out-of-plane bending, greatly increasing stiffness. gripper holder can be 3D-printed with CR-PLA was fabricated molding silicone gel. perform enveloping grasping pinch operations depending on object size, weight, surrounding environment. bending performance were investigated experiments finite element analysis. fingertip about 1.45 times higher than that without endoskeleton. It found grasp objects maximum diameter 80.5 mm weight 450 g, which 80.5% length six self-weight, respectively.