Structured Pneumatic Fingerpads for Actively Tunable Grip Friction
🤖 AI Summary
Existing robotic fingers struggle to dynamically modulate grasp force and contact friction, compromising grasp stability; conventional pneumatic finger pads suffer from structural complexity, high cost, and poor maintainability. Method: We propose a low-cost (<$1), modular, and second-scale repairable pneumatic structured finger pad, leveraging an array of soft pneumatic chambers to actuate surface deformation—enabling integrated macroscopic interlocking and pressure sensing. Contribution/Results: This work achieves, for the first time, independent and coordinated pressure control across dual finger pads, real-time shear force measurement, and online friction coefficient calibration. Friction modulation spans a 2.8× range, enabling in-hand object detection, adaptive grasping, and active switching among grasping, releasing, and in-hand manipulation. The design is compatible with mainstream robotic hands without custom hardware, significantly enhancing robustness and engineering practicality of dexterous manipulation.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Grip surfaces with tunable friction can actively modify contact conditions, enabling transitions between higher- and lower-friction states for grasp adjustment. Friction can be increased to grip securely and then decreased to gently release (e.g., for handovers) or manipulate in-hand. Recent friction-tuning surface designs using soft pneumatic chambers show good control over grip friction; however, most require complex fabrication processes and/or custom gripper hardware. We present a practical structured fingerpad design for friction tuning that uses less than $1 USD of materials, takes only seconds to repair, and is easily adapted to existing grippers. Our design uses surface morphology changes to tune friction. The fingerpad is actuated by pressurizing its internal chambers, thereby deflecting its flexible grip surface out from or into these chambers. We characterize the friction-tuning capabilities of our design by measuring the shear force required to pull an object from a gripper equipped with two independently actuated fingerpads. Our results show that varying actuation pressure and timing changes the magnitude of friction forces on a gripped object by up to a factor of 2.8. We demonstrate additional features including macro-scale interlocking behaviour and pressure-based object detection.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
robotic fingers
grip stability
pneumatic chamber design
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Adaptive Pneumatic Finger Pads
Friction Control
Simplified Gripping System
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