Abstract
Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors:“The statements in the background of the invention are provide d to assist with understanding the inventionand its applications and uses, and may not constitute prior art.“There are several approaches that have been used to design soft picking tools f or a sort and placerobotic system to pick objects of varying shapes, dimensions , weights, materials, and levels of fragility.However, many of these approaches either require a large footprint or do not enable firm fingers, leading topick ing tools that are not adequate for cluttered or flush grasping. For example, a conventional approachis to use three fingers that are affixed to a gripper body and that exhibit radial symmetry about the body’smedial axis. However, this ap proach has several shortcomings. First, the use of three affixed fingers disposed in radial symmetry about the medial axis results in a large footprint that is not adequate for clutteredgrasping, particularly when the gripper targets objec ts with widely varying dimensions, such as elongatedobjects. A large footprint also hinders grasping objects that are flushed against a wall (i.e., flush grasping), particularly in soft grippers where the fingertips are not hard or stiff e nough to penetrate between atarget object and the wall. In addition, grippers h aving fingers that are separate, affixed components areless robust in dynamic a pplications where speed is required.
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