SBIR Phase I: Gentle: A Smart, Affordable, Soft Gripper for Robotic Food Picking and Packaging

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是提高新鲜水果、蔬菜、烘焙食品的采摘和包装、农业以及需要实际处理或抓住各种微妙物体的任务的生产能力。电动软机器人抓手技术本质上是安全的，可以在人类占据的环境中工作，并与人类工人合作，因为它的软手指可以变形并在碰撞时吸收冲击。此外，有了研发产生的数据，从长远来看，将为机器人手打开新的用例，比如帮助农民从树上摘水果。这项研究致力于机器人技术领域，针对传统的机器人抓取器和算法难以拾取的物品，将有助于实现传统手工过程的自动化，并提高其效率，这些过程受到缺乏足够工人的困扰，最终无法支持美国制造业。由于软机器人在人类交互中固有的安全性和适应性，这项研究还可以扩展到其他领域，如协作机器人、医疗保健和辅助机器人领域。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目专注于采用模块化方法、感官集成和反馈控制的电动软夹爪的技术研究和开发，以及研究新的算法和用户界面，以赋予这些系统智能以提高性能。当物体的大小、重量、形状和易损性不同时，机器人系统集成商会发现很难使用传统的僵化和昂贵的夹具来自动化平凡的、低价值的任务。柔软的抓手可以提供一种解决方案，适应物体和其他条件的变化。通过启用软手指的电子操作，可以直接与机械臂集成，消除复杂的基础设施要求并降低成本，这将有助于提高投资回报，并降低小企业使用这一最新技术的进入壁垒。该研究将在生鲜农产品采摘和包装以及电子商务订单履行应用中遇到的常见、现实条件下进行测试和验证。研究目标是：优化设计和制造技术，量化抓取行为，以提高适应性，提供反馈控制，并通过结合数据和用户输入来确定最佳抓取参数，将智能集成到抓取器。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is the improvement in throughput of fresh fruit, vegetable, baked item picking and packing, agriculture, and tasks that require physically handling or grasping a wide range of delicate objects. The electrically-actuated soft robotic gripper technology is inherently safe to work in human-occupied environments and collaborate with human workers since its soft fingers can deform and absorb impacts in case of a collision. In addition, with the data generated from the research and development, new use cases will be opened for robotic hands in the long term such as helping farmers pick fruits from trees. Working in the robotics technology area and targeting items that are difficult to pick up by traditional robotic grippers and algorithms, the research will help automate and increase the efficiency of traditionally manual processes that suffer from a lack of enough workers to ultimately support American manufacturing. This research also has longer-term benefits to expand into other sectors such as collaborative robotics, healthcare, and assistive robotics areas because of the inherent safety and adaptability of soft robotics in human interaction. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project focuses on technical research and development of electrically actuated soft grippers with a modular approach, sensory integration, and feedback control, as well as the study of new algorithms and user interfaces to endow these systems with intelligence for improved performance. When there is variation in object size, weight, shape, and fragility, robotic system integrators find it difficult to use traditional rigid and expensive grippers to automate mundane, low-value tasks. Soft grippers can provide a solution, adapting to variations in objects and other conditions. Enabling electrical operation of soft fingers enables direct integration with robotic arms eliminating complex infrastructure requirements and reducing cost, which will help improve the return on investment and reduce barriers of entry for small businesses to utilize this latest technology. The research will undertake testing and validation under common, realistic conditions encountered in fresh produce picking and packing and e-commerce order fulfillment applications. The research goals are to: optimize the design and fabrication techniques and quantify grasping behavior for improved adaptability, provide feedback control, and integrate intelligence to the grippers by incorporating data and user input to determine optimal grasp parameters.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.