68 Strength Analysis of Robot Soft Fingers Using Flexible Beam Theory

In recent years, Robotics and Robot industries have got momentum and a large number of industrial robots, humanoid robots, and service robots have been developed. Researchers continue to design new robots with greater capabilities to perform more challenging and comprehensive tasks. The contact between the gripper and the object provides prehension and manipulation of objects. A soft hand is required in situation where the damage to the object or fingers is to be avoided. In this context, an attempt is made to determine the strength of robot soft fingers through experiments and numerical simulation. Soft fingers are assumed to be flexible cantilever beam. Two different hyper elastic materials and two different diameters are considered for the analysis. The flexural rigidity of each finger material is determined using flexible beam theory. It is further used in numerical simulation for the strength analysis of the soft fingers.