A tactile sensing technique for automatic gripping of compact shaped non-rigid materials

In the handling of non-rigid materials additional considerations have to be made with respect to manipulation, gripping and sensing required; and constant monitoring of the material is required whilst being handled, as well as specialised gripping technology. This paper describes new tactile sensing technologies for integral operation within gripping devices. Present tactile sensing technology has tended to concentrate on large arrays of sensing elements. These have drawbacks in that they are costly, can be computationally expensive to process and do not always yield all the information required. For the type of application described here the emphasis is on the ability of the sensor to be operationally and physically robust, be compatible to the material and environment which which it is working whilst deducing data on force centroid, force distribution, surface shape and slip. The instrumentation of two gripper configurations have been investigated. One technique has been deployed on a pneumatic multi-chamber finger end effector and another on a multi-plate gripping device. These devices are particularly relevant to the handling of agricultural and food products