Autonomous planning and control of soft untethered grippers in unstructured environments

• DOI: 10.1007/s12213-016-0091-1
• Publication Date: 2016-09-12T17:26:11Z
• Authors: Federico Ongaro; Stefano Scheggi; ChangKyu Yoon; Frank van den Brink; Seung Hyun Oh; David H. Gracias; Sarthak Misra
• Keywords: Grippers; Robot end effector

The use of small, maneuverable, untethered and reconfigurable robots could provide numerous advantages in various micromanipulation tasks. Examples include microassembly, pick-and-place fragile micro-objects for lab-on-a-chip applications, assisted hatching in-vitro fertilization minimally invasive surgery. This study assesses the potential soft magnetic grippers as alternatives or complements to conventional tethered rigid micromanipulators. We demonstrate closed-loop control automated biological material on porcine tissue an unstructured environment. also ability recognize sort non-biological micro-scale objects. fully autonomous nature experiments is made possible by integration planning decision-making algorithms, well temperature electromagnetic motion control. are capable completing tasks at average velocity 1.8 ±0.71 mm/s a drop-off error 0.62 ±0.22 mm. Color-sensitive sorting three objects completed 1.21 ±0.68 0.85 ±0.41 Our findings suggest that improved augment capabilities current soft-robotic instruments especially advancedtasks involving manipulation.