Development of piezoelectric actuator based compliant micro gripper for robotic peg-in-hole assembly

Piezoelectric actuator can be used for handling and grasping of miniature parts in micro manipulation or robotic assembly where design of micro gripper is a critical issue because the object has to be inserted straightway into a hole during robotic peg-in-hole assembly. In this paper, the compliant micro gripper is designed using bimorph piezoelectric actuators along with a 3-degrees of freedom (DOF) based micro manipulation system. The analyses of piezoelectric based micro gripper and micro manipulation system are carried out which can provide the precise positioning of object during robotic micro assembly operations for shifting it from one to another hole position in a large work space (100 mm × 100 mm). By developing a prototype, it is demonstrated that piezoelectric actuator based compliant micro gripper is capable of handling different pegs and it can perform the robotic peg-in-hole assembly in a large work space.