Soft Driving Epicyclical Mechanism for Robotic Finger

• Main Authors: Jose Luis Ramirez Arias, Astrid Rubiano Fonseca, Paola Andrea Castiblanco Moreno
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-07-01
• Series: Actuators
• Subjects: actuation and driving mechanism; soft driving epicyclical mechanism; shape memory alloy
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0825/8/3/58

Nowadays, the development or improvement of soft actuation mechanisms is a crucial<br />topic for the achievement of dexterous manipulation using. Then, a primary target of research is the<br />design of actuation and driving devices. Consequently, in this paper, we introduce a soft driving<br />epicyclical mechanism that mimics human muscle behavior and fulfills motion requirements to<br />achieve grasping gestures using a robotic finger. The prototype is experimentally assessed, and<br />results show that our approach has enough performance for the implementation in grasping tasks.<br />Furthermore, we introduce the basis for a new soft epicyclical mechanism merger with shape memory<br />alloys to allow active stiffness control of the mechanism.