Designing a Soft Bioinspired Grasper for Underwater Manipulation
Mentors
Project Description
The Morphable Biorobotics Lab at Boston University is developing a bioinspired soft underwater gripper for grasping delicate marine samples. This technology is key to ensuring adaptability in unpredictable environments without inflicting damage to the sample, the environment or the robot itself. This REU project aims to design a soft gripper that encloses around fragile objects similar to a caging mechanism. Tasks involve operating relevant machinery for soft robotic fabrication, such as a CO2 laser cutter and heat press, as well as design in CAD. The performance of the prototypes will be analyzed via visual data of the grippers ability to grasp a variety of objects and quantitative data of the forces exerted by the gripper.
Research Goals
- Design and fabrication of a soft inflatable gripper
- Identify the ideal performance characteristics of the gripper
- Conduct grasping and manipulation demos of gripper performance.
Learning Goals
- Soft robotic fabrication with relevant machinery
- Design in CAD
- Building effective testing set-ups
- Qualitative and quantitative data processing
- Team working
- Work towards a scientific publication
Timeline
Weeks 1-2: Training on equipment and fabrication process, construction of a base gripper design
Weeks 3-6: Altering design parameters of base gripper, fabrication of new designs until a diverse set of working prototypes is established.
Weeks 7-8: Qualitative testing of prototypes in water tank, taking visual data of gripper grasping various objects with camera.
Weeks 9: Quantitative testing with Universal Robots robot arm, collecting data on force exerted by each prototype
Weeks 10: Data processing, create poster presentation