Soft finger unit and soft gripper using the same

Soft Finger Unit and Gripper Capable of Bending and Suction via Positive/Negative Pressure Switching

This technology features a soft finger unit and gripper that selectively implements shape-adaptive grasping and vacuum suction grasping through a single pneumatic control. It utilizes a soft body made of stretchable material with internal pneumatic channels and an opening/closing module that operates under positive and negative pressure.

Existing soft grippers suffer from low payload capacity and difficulty in grasping specific shapes, such as thin sheets. This has historically necessitated the inefficient addition of separate suction-type grippers to overcome these limitations.

This technology introduces a check-valve-based opening/closing module at the tip of the soft body. It performs shape-adaptive grasping by expanding the bending chamber under positive pressure and enables suction grasping by opening the module to deliver vacuum pressure under negative pressure. This allows a single gripper to perform both grasping methods. It significantly improves facility efficiency by handling various object shapes in fields such as food packaging, logistics picking, and electronic component handling without the need for gripper changes.

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Key Features:

• A stretchable soft body with internal pneumatic channels formed along its longitudinal direction
• A suction unit provided at the end of the soft body, featuring a suction channel that communicates with the internal pneumatic channels
• A pneumatic input unit coupled to the tip of the soft body, featuring an internal inflow channel
• An opening/closing module that closes the suction channel during positive pressure to perform bending grasping, and opens it during negative pressure to perform suction grasping

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This invention was developed with support from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy for recognition technology and grippers capable of multi-product random piece picking.