NRI: INT: COLLAB: Soft Active Contact Pads with Tunable Stiffness and Adhesion for Customizable Robotic Grasping

随着机器人越来越多地出现在我们的个人、公共和工作环境中，它们必须配备各种各样的操作任务和身体接触。对于许多这样的活动，这样的机器人必须能够掌握各种各样的日常物品，或者能够与人类或其他机器人进行物理互动。虽然有适合特定任务的机器人抓手（“末端执行器”），但由于缺乏能够处理各种物体的“通用”抓手系统，协作机器人的进展一直受到限制。通用夹持系统有潜力显著提高机器人的性能，并通过减少机器人需要的通用功能的末端执行器的数量来降低成本。这个国家机器人计划（NRI）项目将通过创造新的材料架构来解决这一关键需求，使机器人能够通用抓取。这将通过使用能够改变其机械性能（如刚度和附着力）的材料来实现，并将这些材料结合到机器人将用于抓取的接触垫中。这项工作将通过影响合作机器人将发挥重要作用的多个部门，包括制造业、航空航天、农业、老年人护理和康复，促进国内经济增长和福祉。该项目还将通过初高中学生研讨会和科学活动促进教育推广，这些活动将激励学生更多地了解材料在软性和人性化机器人中的作用。该项目的最终目标是实现一个可定制的机器人抓手，可以在广泛的环境中操作。为了实现这一目标，研究团队将追求以下三个相互关联的研究目标。首先是研究材料刚度、表面几何形状和机器人操作过程中通常出现的加载条件之间的相互作用。这将包括开发粘附控制的机器人抓取方法，利用具有可调刚度和粘附性的材料和结构。第二个目标是设计主动接触垫，使其具有高粘附力和高粘附可调性。这些垫将利用对材料特性如何影响接触面之间机械应力分布的仔细理解。第三个目标是将软接触垫集成到机器人末端执行器或机器人手的指尖中。作为这项工作的一部分，该团队将通过对各种形状、大小、重量和机械性能的物体进行比较研究，展示抓握性能和多功能性的增强。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

As robots have a greater presence in our personal, public, and working environments, they must be equipped for a broad range of manipulation tasks and physical encounters. For many of these activities, such robots must be able to grasp a wide variety of everyday objects or be capable of physical interactions with humans or other robots. While there are robotic grippers ("end effectors") well-suited for specific tasks, progress in cooperative robotics has been limited by a lack of "universal" gripping systems that can handle a diverse set of objects. Universal gripping systems have the potential to dramatically improve robot performance and reduce costs by decreasing the number of end effectors that a robot needs for general purpose functionality. This National Robotics Initiative (NRI) project will address this critical need by creating new material architectures that enable universal robotic grasping. This will be accomplished by using materials that are capable of changing their mechanical properties such as stiffness and adhesion, and incorporating these materials into contact pads that the robot will use for gripping. This work will promote domestic economic growth and well-being by impacting multiple sectors in which cooperative robots will have an important role, including manufacturing, aerospace, agriculture, elderly care, and rehabilitation. This project will also contribute to educational outreach through middle/high school student workshops and science events that will inspire students to learn more about the role of materials in soft and human-friendly robotics. The ultimate goal of this project is to realize a customizable robotic gripper that can operate in a broad range of contexts. To achieve this, the research team will pursue the following three interrelated research objectives. The first is to investigate the interplay between material stiffness, surface geometry, and the loading conditions that typically arise during robotic manipulation. This will include the development of adhesion-controlled robotic grasping approaches that exploit materials and structures with tunable stiffness and adhesion. The second objective is to engineer active contact pads that allow for high adhesive gripping forces and also high adhesion tunability. These pads will exploit a careful understanding of how material properties influence the distribution of mechanical stresses between contacting surfaces. The third objective is to integrate the soft contact pads into robotic end-effectors or the fingertips of a robotic hand. As part of this effort, the team will demonstrate enhancements in gripping performance and versatility through a comparative study involving objects with a broad range of shapes, sizes, weights, and mechanical properties.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.