Theoretical and kinematic solution of high reconfigurable grasping for industrial manufacturing

High flexibility and high speed is the goal for industrial manufacturing using robots. However, it is difficult to put them together due to the fact that they are contradicting with each other. To solve this problem, a new high reconfigurable gripper is proposed for robotic manipulator to improve its flexibility, so that the robot can accomplish an assembly task with shorter time. In this paper, the authors describe the general principles and concepts to define and design a new gripper. This new gripper has two degrees of freedom (DoFs) per finger and can support enough payload for manufacturing applications. The simple kinematics permits it to perform the function with high speed. Moreover, the same design concept can be applied to handle different workpieces within different scenarios. The physical models are shown as proof of this successful project.