The Quick Release Mechanism was designed to aid researchers in the computer science department here at UT Austin attempting to perform the water bottle flip challenge with a robotic arm. To perform this challenge with a robotic arm the end effector on the arm needs to have a quick release mechanism to rapidly release the water bottle from the robotic gripper at the right time. After many weeks of defining the problem and how it relates to a novel mechanism, the team worked to develop a mechanism that could slowly close and rapidly open a robotic gripper that is driven by linear translation. The final robotic gripper that the group developed their mechanism for is pictured in Figure 2. The input mechanism (highlighted in red in Figure 3 below) is what the team developed a mechanism for.
The issue with making a quick release robotic gripper without a mechanism (by just using a conventional DC drive motor) is that a DC motor that can produce the speeds needed to achieve a snapping mechanism is very large and heavy. Therefore, attaching a large and heavy DC motor to the end of a lightweight robotic arm becomes very difficult and somewhat impossible.
Figure 1: Water Bottle Flipping Challenge