Scientists have developed a new robot soft grip inspired by nature

Soft robot clamps can greatly improve productivity in many fields, however, existing designs are too complex and expensive, a foreign research team developed ROSE, a novel hugging type soft gripper, inspired by the blooming and closing of roses, ROSE has a surprisingly simple, inexpensive and scalable design. Even in challenging environments and conditions, it can pick up multiple objects without damaging them.

While grasping objects is a relatively simple task for us humans, there are many mechanisms involved in this simple task. Picking up objects requires fine control over the fingers, their position, and the pressure applied by each finger, which in turn requires sophisticated sensing capabilities. There is no doubt that robot grasping and manipulation is an important research area in the field of robotics.

Today, robotic hands have replaced humans in a variety of complex and dangerous activities, including restaurants, farms, factories, and manufacturing plants, and in general, soft robotic jigs are better suited to the task of picking up fragile objects, such as fruits and vegetables. However, while soft robots are promising as harvesting tools, they often share a common drawback: they are expensive. Most soft robotic fixture designs require complex assembly of multiple components, which increases development and maintenance costs.

A research team at the Japan Institute of Advanced Technology (JAIST), led by Associate Professor Van Anh Ho, has come up with a breakthrough solution to these problems by taking inspiration from nature to develop an innovative soft robotic gripper called "ROSE", which stands for "rotation-based squeeze gripper".

What is impressive about the ROSE is its design, with the soft grip section having the shape of a cylindrical funnel or sleeve and attached to a rigid circular base, which in turn attaches to the shaft of the actuator. The funnel must be placed on the object to be picked up, covering a considerable portion of its surface area, and then the actuator causes the base to turn, so that the outer skin of the flexible funnel is tightly wrapped around the object. The mechanism was loosely inspired by the changing shape of the rose, which blooms during the day and closes at night.

The ROSE has significant advantages over more traditional fixtures. First, it is much cheaper to manufacture, the hard parts can all be 3D printed, and the funnel itself can be easily produced using molds and liquid silicone rubber, ensuring that the design is easy to scale and suitable for mass production.

Second, ROSE can easily pick up a variety of objects without complex control and sensing mechanisms. Unlike jigs that rely on a finger-like structure, ROSE's telescopes apply gentler, more uniform pressure, which makes ROSE better suited for handling fragile produce such as strawberries and pears, as well as slippery objects, and the jigs weigh less than 200 grams and have an impressive payload to weight ratio of 6,812 percent.

Third, ROSE is extremely durable and rugged. The team showed that even after 400,000 trials, it could successfully continue to pick up objects. In addition, in the presence of obvious cracks or incisions, the funnel can still work normally. Assoc said: "The proposed fixture performed well in demanding situations and it was able to withstand rigorous testing, in which we cut the full height of the funnel into four separate sections, proving its capabilities." "This test highlights the excellent elasticity and optimal performance of the manipulator under challenging conditions," said Professor He.

Finally, ROSE can be endowed with sensing capabilities. The researchers achieved this by placing multiple cameras on top of a circular base that pointed inside a funnel covered with markers, where the cameras could pick up the location of the markers and analyze them through image processing algorithms, a promising way to estimate the size and shape of the objects being grabbed.

The research team notes that ROSE is a competitive choice for a variety of applications, including harvesting operations in factories and sorting items. "ROSE fixtures have great potential to revolutionise grasping applications and gain wide acceptance across all sectors," Assoc concluded. "Its simple yet robust and reliable design will inspire researchers and manufacturers to use it for a variety of grasping tasks in the near future," said Professor Ho.