Human-like Robotic Pinching End Effector (HRPEE) using McKibben Muscles on UR5 Robotic Arm

Abstract

This paper proposes a design of a human-like robotic pinching end effector using thin McKibben muscles integrated with a robotic arm for pick and place operations. Unlike conventional grippers, this design considers safe interactions with the environment while maintaining the pick and place success rate. This is achieved by mimicking the human counterparts anatomically for pinching and replacing them with soft materials for the structure and actuating system. The performance of the proposed gripper is evaluated in three phases, flexion experiment, pinching experiment, and pick and place experiment. From the pinching experiments, the proposed gripper is observed to successfully pick objects such as a pen, cutter, and a sponge. The results from the pick and place experiments indicate the proposed gripper can perform pick and place operations ten times consecutively with a 100% success rate similar to a rigid conventional gripper. It is envisaged that the proposed work can be particularly useful for industrial pick and place operations as it is less hazardous and has a high pick and place success rate.