A Soft-Rigid Hybrid Gripper With Lateral Compliance and Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation

Soft grippers are receiving growing attention due to their compliance-based interactive safety and dexterity. Hybrid gripper with soft actuators enhanced by rigid constraints is in design. With structural components actuated actuators, they could achieve excellent grasping adaptability payload while also being easy model control conventional kinematics. However, existing works were mostly focused on achieving superior perception simple planar workspaces, resulting far less dexterity compared grippers. In this work, we took inspiration from the human metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joint proposed a new hybrid design eight independent muscles. It was shown that adding MCP complexity critical enabling range of novel features gripper, including in-hand manipulation, lateral passive compliance, as well modes. A prototype fabricated tested our proprietary dual-arm robot platform vision-guided grasping. very lightweight pneumatic bellows grasp objects over 20 times its weight compliance. Using platform, highly anthropomorphic dexterous manipulations demonstrated using two grippers, tug war rod passing towel between manipulation. Matching performance specifications underlying modeling, actuation, control, experimental validation details presented, offering promising approach dexterity, strength, compliance robotic