Sen Li, Fang Wan, Chaoyang Song: Active Surface with Passive Omni-Directional Adaptation for In-Hand Manipulation. IEEE/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR2024), Chicago, USA, 2024.

Abstract

Soft fingers with omni-directional adaptability ex-cel in 3D twisting, outperforming two-dimensional self-adaptive hands using a finger rotation mechanism to achieve similar adaptability. In this study, we present the design of a soft robotic finger with an active surface on an omni-adaptive structure, which can be easily installed on existing grippers and achieve stability and dexterity for in-hand manipulation. The system's active surfaces initially transfer the object from the fingertip segment with less compliance to the middle segment of the finger with superior adaptability. Despite the omni-directional deformation of the finger, in-hand manipulation can still be executed with controlled active surfaces. We characterized the soft finger's stiffness distribution and simplified models to assess the feasibility of lifting and reorienting a grasped object in a 3D twisting state. A set of experiments on in-hand manipulation was performed with the proposed fingers, demonstrating the dexterity and robustness of the strategy.

BibTeX (Download)

@conference{Li2024ActiveSurface,
title = {Active Surface with Passive Omni-Directional Adaptation for In-Hand Manipulation},
author = {Sen Li and Fang Wan and Chaoyang Song},
doi = {10.1109/ReMAR61031.2024.10619925},
year  = {2024},
date = {2024-06-23},
urldate = {2024-06-23},
booktitle = {IEEE/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR2024)},
address = {Chicago, USA},
abstract = {Soft fingers with omni-directional adaptability ex-cel in 3D twisting, outperforming two-dimensional self-adaptive hands using a finger rotation mechanism to achieve similar adaptability. In this study, we present the design of a soft robotic finger with an active surface on an omni-adaptive structure, which can be easily installed on existing grippers and achieve stability and dexterity for in-hand manipulation. The system's active surfaces initially transfer the object from the fingertip segment with less compliance to the middle segment of the finger with superior adaptability. Despite the omni-directional deformation of the finger, in-hand manipulation can still be executed with controlled active surfaces. We characterized the soft finger's stiffness distribution and simplified models to assess the feasibility of lifting and reorienting a grasped object in a 3D twisting state. A set of experiments on in-hand manipulation was performed with the proposed fingers, demonstrating the dexterity and robustness of the strategy.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {conference}
}