Development of a six degree-of-freedom reconfigurable gripper for flexible fixtureless assembly

In this paper, the design and development of a six degree-of-freedom reconfigurable gripper for implementation of robot based flexible fixtureless assembly is described. With the flexible fixtureless assembly technique, the traditional fixtures used in automotive body assembly industries are eliminated by the use of robots with multifinger grippers to grasp and assemble parts. The gripper for this purpose has the capability of precisely grasping different parts, rigidly holding the parts in space, and locating the parts for assembly. A novel three-finger gripper is developed in this work. Each finger has two movable joints and two point-contacts for part grasping. The finite element analysis, used to simulate deflections of the gripper components under load, is presented. The overall performance of the gripper is examined. The gripper was fabricated and tested in grasping experiments using automotive body panels, which verified that the objectives set out for this work are achieved.