A gripper for flap separation and opening of sealed bags

2026-03-11

AI Summary

This study addresses the frequent, repetitive, and musculoskeletal injury-prone task of opening sterile pouch flaps in clinical settings by proposing a novel robotic gripper and associated opening strategy. The design integrates actively actuated grooved roller fingertips, compliant flexible fingers, and an environment-constrained grasping mechanism, enabling reliable automation of this low-value yet critical procedure for the first time. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed gripper can stably grasp and separate thin, flexible flaps, and when deployed in a dual-gripper configuration, effectively applies the necessary forces to open sealed pouches. This approach significantly enhances operational reliability and improves human–robot collaboration efficiency in clinical workflows.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Replanning and Plan Repair

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Experiences and lessons learnt from Web-based algorithms and system deployments
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Robustness and generalizability of Web mining methods

Abstract

Separating thin, flexible layers that must be individually grasped is a common but challenging manipulation primitive for most off-the-shelf grippers. A prominent example arises in clinical settings: the opening of sterile flat pouches for the preparation of the operating room, where the first step is to separate and grasp the flaps. We present a novel gripper design and opening strategy that enables reliable flap separation and robust seal opening. This capability addresses a high-volume repetitive hospital procedure in which nurses manually open up to 240 bags per shift, a physically demanding task linked to musculoskeletal injuries. Our design combines an active dented-roller fingertip with compliant fingers that exploit environmental constraints to robustly grasp thin flexible flaps. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed gripper reliably grasps and separates sealed bag flaps and other thin-layered materials from the hospital, the most sensitive variable affecting performance being the normal force applied. When two copies of the gripper grasp both flaps, the system withstands the forces needed to open the seals robustly. To our knowledge, this is one of the first demonstrations of robotic assistance to automate this repetitive, low-value, but critical hospital task.

Problem

• flap separation
• sealed bag opening
• thin flexible layers
• robotic gripper
• hospital automation

Innovation

• gripper design
• flap separation
• sealed bag opening
• compliant fingers
• robotic assistance