Design Summary Draft 1


The article "This soft robotic gripper can screw in your light bulbs for you", (2017), a team of engineers at the University of California, San Diego, designed and built a soft robotic grip and its features. The soft robotic gripper can "pick up and manipulate objects without needing to see them and needing to be trained." It has three fingers made of pneumatic chambers which, have multiple degrees of freedom allowing manipulation of the held object. Each finger is covered with a "smart sensing skin made of silicone rubber" with embedded "sensors made of conducting carbon nanotubes". The sensing skin records and detects the nanotubes conductivity changes as the fingers bend. The data is then processed by the control board, which then creates a 3D model of the object the gripper is manipulating. As good as the soft robotic gripper is, there are similar products with more adaptable features like the FlexShaperGripper developed by Festo with collaboration with students from Oslo and Akershus University.

 The FlexShapeGripper, able to pick up objects with widest range of shapes. The gripper consists of a two cylinder which is filled with compressed air and water. The second chamber is attached with elastic silicone moulding, which acts like chameleon’s tongue. When the gripper approaches an object, the handling system guides the gripper across the object ensuring it is touching with the silicone cap. The air inside the pressurised chamber will be released through a small opening. The spring support inside the mechanism moves the piston upwards and the silicone cap pulls itself inwards. Then, the silicone cap wraps itself in a tightly form fit around the irregular object. All the mechanism inside the gripper is triggered by pressure. When holding an object, it does not require any extra energy. Thus, making the coordination easier between the handling system and gripper. The proportional valve helps to set the force and the deformation precisely to what is required. This allows several parts to be gripped at once in a single procedure.

Similarly, there are better gripper such as MultiChoiceGripper developed by Festo with collaboration with students with University of Linz. It was inspired by the human and modelled to the thumb. The grippers have a different type of grips, which allows the gripper to rotate its finger to grip in “parallel or centric” manner. The gripper is attached to the robotic arm with three compressed air tubes. The built-in cylinders are used to change the gripping manner and locking its gripping position by a mechanical locking system. Each finger is attached with pneumatic microcylinder which control the finger joint. With the addition of individual own drive system, it allows the finger to move individually using compressed air. The gripper has a T-shaped groove allows it to be adaptable and flexible which allows the finger to be replaceable. Also, requires no extra tools to replace the fingers of the gripper.

In conclusion, the soft robotic gripper would not be a better choice compared to another gripper like FlexShapeGripper and MultiChoiceGripper. It does not have any unique gripper finger features resembling chameleon’s tongue or resembling a human’s hand. The gripping mechanism of the FlexShapeGripper and MultichoiceGripper have a much more unique mechanism as the gripper are able to hold on different irregular object.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Subject: Self-introduction Dear Professor Brad, My name is Andy Ashley Tan Qing Feng, I am writing this letter as an introductory of myself so you will be able to know more about me. I graduated from Nanyang Polytechnic in 2017 with a Diploma of Aeronautical and Aerospace Technology. Even though I prefer to continue my studies in Aerospace Engineering, I pick Mechanical Engineering is because the course itself gives me a wider variety of choices in engineering field as comapared to Aerospace Engineering. I have an interest in sports, especially soccer and frisbee. Playing sports allows me to destress and keeps my mood in check, enabling me to focus in my studies. The difficulties I have is not being able to complete my sentence and delivering a piece of information properly to a large audience. During national service, I was posted as a trainer and was assigned to conduct a lesson on the components of a tank to a group of cadets. I had difficulties conducting the lesson
Read more

Critical Analysis

In the beginning of the course, I felt that it is important to have Effective Communication as a module. I believe communicating well is very important and is a essential skill which will be beneficial in the near future. My goal for this module is to improve on my written and presentation skills. There are a few takeaways for this module and group project. Firstly, I have learnt a lot from my professor on how to paraphrase, citing a source and summarizing an article properly. After practicing on paraphrasing many times, it helps to improve my written skills. This helps me to paraphrase better for my design summary and design analysis. Secondly, professor brad insists us in doing peer evaluation for each other. This help us by learning from one another. Lastly, the presentation for my project. There was an improvement I made from the mock presentation. I was not a good speaker to begin with and presenting to a group of audience was never easy to me. The feedback my classmates gav
Read more

Annotated Summary

Saraogi V., (2019), How will autonomy shape the UK shipping industry? Ship Technology. Retrieved from https://www.ship-technology.com/features/how-will-autonomy-shape-the-uk-shipping-industry/ This article highlights on how autonomous technology will benefit the shipping industry in the UK. 90% of the trading system comes from the UK and ensuring that ships can move around safely in the open waters with the use of autonomous systems is crucial. In an industry that is archaic in its shipping efficiency and processes, autonomy is highly sought after in the prospect of advancements in the maritime industry. To keep vessels save and secure in open waters, cybersecurity still remains as a main concern needs to be addressed with the implementation of autonomous technology. There is an interest by newcomers entering the sector, keeping a lookout on whether autonomy can be the solution to shipping misery. The introduction of autonomy can be beneficial to maritime industry in substantial
Read more