Date of Award

1-1-2022

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Ocean Engineering

Department

Ocean Engineering

First Advisor

Stephen Licht

Abstract

This project aimed to advance the deployment opportunities of soft grippers by providing a technique to quantitatively evaluate the loading distribution of a manipulator. In an underwater environment, soft grippers show great promise as they provide a means of delicate manipulation that has been claimed to largely surpasses the capabilities of traditional rigid grippers. The inherent compliance of soft grippers passively eliminates accidental shock and point loading; however, this compliant mechanic also complicates the quantitative assessment of measuring and mapping the loading exerted by a soft gripper. Knowing the loading distribution of a soft gripper would provide a numerical means to justify the claim of capability superiority over a traditional mechanical gripper. This project successfully proved that a pressure-sensitive film could capture the maximum load distribution of a fluid elastomer actuator aided granular jamming gripper in an underwater environment. Analysis of the distribution loading shows that this gripper exerted a maximum pressure loading which saturated the ultra extreme low film (>50.3 kPa) in small regions where granular point loading was observed, while SPI’s Topaq Analysis reported the average pressure to be 29.13 kPa. This jamming gripper was designed to be field-interchangeable with the Blue Robotics Newton Gripper which shows average pressure loadings up to three times greater than the jamming gripper.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.