Experimental Analysis of Soft Pads for Robotic Fingers

Introduction. The importance of compliance and friction properties of robotic finger pads in order to enhance grasp stability and robustness has been widely remarked in previous research [1, 2, 3]. In order to develop robotic fingers with soft pads some important indications can be obtained from the analysis of the human finger behavior [4]. Biologicallyinspired robotic fingers will be characterized by an internal rigid structure covered by a thick soft layer and by an external thin epidermal layer. Engineering approaches able to consider all the aspects that concern design of soft robotic finger are completely absent in the literature. In this work guidelines for a systematic evaluation of fingertip design alternatives are proposed and discussed. Special purpose equipment, developed in order to test the alternative fingertip solutions, is described and early experimental results are commented.