Design and Validation of a Manoeuvering Caging Gripper for Cluttered Environments: A mechanical approach for grasping in cluttered environments

This research proposes and validates a novel grasping principle to be able to set caging grasps in cluttered environments. A prototype is designed making use of manoeuvering fingers which propagate along the object surface and are covered with everting belts to minimize slip and thus friction forces on the object and environment. Using several...

Compliant shape adaptive chicory gripping: for robotic sorting processes

This thesis contains the design process of a compliant shape adaptive chicory gripper for robotic sorting processes. The robotic sorting line consists of an input and output conveyor-belt. The input line contains unsorted chicories which are scanned by a robotic vision system. Overhead FlexPicker robots, equipped with chicory grippers, sort the...

Actuation of an origami inspired curved-crease gripper with a planar bending actuator

A particular design choice in origami engineering is to use curved creases. By folding a curved-crease design, the sheets connected to the crease line have to bend, allowing for novel properties unachievable with straight-crease origami. This thesis explores the design of curved-crease-folding mechanisms with integrated planar bending actuators....