Three-Finger Robotic Gripper for Irregular-Shaped Objects

The development of industrial and service robots in recent years has attracted a lot of attention to robotics research. Commercially available robotic grippers are sometimes costly and difficult to customize for individual applications. Therefore, an open-source, low-cost three-finger robotic gripper has been introduced in this paper. The main focus was to create a 3D-printed model. 3D printing technology solves the issues of cost and weight for the implementation of designs. Linear-bearing LM8UU hard-chrome smooth rods were used in the design. Flexible couplings were used to provide motion to the fingers of the gripper. DC servomotor was used as an actuator in the model. The proposed system used Raspberry Pi as the processor and L298N as the motor driver. The gripper was designed to provide the ability to perform grasping a variety of household objects. The gripper was tested on 7 household objects which included a square box, cylindrical object, broom, cup mug, bag, and bottle. The gripper performed well while grasping different objects. The gripper was successful in grabbing objects of various shapes and sizes to the weight of 1000 gm.