Design of a Soft Underwater Gripper With SMA Actuation

Design of a Soft Underwater Gripper With SMA Actuation

Jovanova, J. (TU Delft Transport Engineering and Logistics)
Var, S.C.S. (Student TU Delft)

2023

Underwater robot tasks pose many challenges for conventional robotic systems. The current rigid robots are limited in their adaptability to the environment and the objects to be manipulated. Soft grasping of objects offers advantages due to the flexibility when dealing with, for example, living organisms, random shaped objects, and coral reefs. Additionally, conventional robotic systems face difficulties when exploring the planet's deep waters due to higher pressures and susceptibility of the often large amount of electronics to underwater conditions. Smart materials such as shape memory alloys can be more advantageous for the actuation of soft robotic underwater grippers because there is less need for complex electronic systems. Therefore, this project explores the use of smart materials for the actuation of a soft robotic underwater gripper. With this aim, three different gripper designs were made and evaluated. Various flexible materials, smart materials, 3D printing settings, numerous gripper configurations, and manufacturing methods are investigated. The gripper is intended to be a maintenance and inspection add-on for an underwater autonomous vehicle.

3D printing
compliant mechanisms
shape memory alloys
smart materials
Soft robotics

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b12fc606-eec1-46dd-af3c-7fb321508755

https://doi.org/10.1115/SMASIS2023-111702

American Society of Mechanical Engineers

2024-05-27

978-0-7918-8752-3

Proceedings of ASME 2023 Conference on Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems, SMASIS 2023

16th Annual ASME Conference on Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems, SMASIS 2023, 2023-09-11 → 2023-09-13, Austin, United States

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2023 J. Jovanova, S.C.S. Var