An Optical Shape Sensor for Integration in Soft Grippers

Abstract

Soft grippers are very popular for complex gripping tasks, as they can easily grip objects of different shapes. Also, usually they cannot damage gripped objects because of their inherent softness. Additionally, in contrast to rigid grippers no or only very little control effort is needed for the gripping process. However, also for soft grippers sensor feedback can help to improve the gripping process and thus expand the range of applications. Thereby, besides gripping force measurements, especially curvature measurements are of interest to reconstruct the deformation of the gripper. In this contribution, a soft three-finger-gripper with integrated optical shape sensor, based on curvature sensors, is presented. The shape sensor allows to control the gripping process and check if an object is gripped correctly.