Introduction

<< Group 3 - Retractable Robotic Fingers - I (Dorothy's Group)

Robotic Grippers have many applications in engineering, educational research, medical robotic, and industrial manufacturing. The type of gripper selected for an application can range from simple parallel jaw grippers, with one degree of freedom better suited to well structured tasks, to more complex adaptive gripper end effectors with multiple degrees of freedom, better suited to more complex and less structured tasks. This selection  depends mostly on the application in question.

A major challenge that many grippers face is the space they occupy when in the open configuration. If a robotic arm tries to move with its gripper in this configuration, then its fingers could collide with obstacles or the target object. This causes undue strain on the motion planning process, and prolongs grasping operations. Therefore, it is beneficial to have these fingers occupy less space during transit, while maintaining grasp capabilities.