A Soft Gripper for Automating Split Operation of Silkworm

In Japan, there is a growing demand for auto-mated silkworm farming system. In this paper, we propose a soft robotic gripper which can grasp silkworm and perform splitting operation after mating. The gripper consists of two soft fingers driven by the pulling motion of an air cylinder for the silkworm grasping. A soft belt driven by the same cylinder performs the splitting operation by a rotation motion. Samples of male and female silkworms were fabricated using silicone rubber were used in the splitting experiments. Two types of soft belts with flat and pleated geometries were experimental tested and the success rate was found to be higher with the pleated typed belt. Appropriate operation conditions were also found through the splitting experiments using the silkworm samples. Finally, experiments were performed on living silkworms provided by our industrial partner and the split operation was successful.