Design and Development of Soft Gripper System for Handling Non Rigid Materials

Automation and flexible system development are an imperative need of current Industrial applications. End effectors are mainly used to achieve many tasks in material handling. There are varieties of grippers/end effectors developed and used for multiple purposes in automation fields. The conventional end effectors mainly used for pick and place the products like hard, soft, variable shape and very thin materials using various principles. But there is a need in fluid transfer through flexible end effectors. We proposed a pliable end effector which has been developed under Bernoulli's principle. The focus of studies in fluid handling course is on the methods, mechanical equipment, systems and related controls used to achieve the functions like movement, quantity, time, space, and control of the end effector. To design and develop a novel dupe for fluid transfer by means of toothed quadrant sector, windup coil spring and bourdon tube. This operates with mechanical linkage mechanisms and attractive-suction forces are applied to the fluid surface. Then the end effector suck and release fluids automatically under the mechatronics control systems. This experiment has been carried out with different viscous fluids and the results compared with analytical results.