UC San Diego

This masters thesis describes a novel underactuated robotic microgripper with two fingers.The design specifications, a thorough kinematic description of the gripper, and its static analysis are presented. The novelty of this gripper lies in the simplicity of its mechanism that can accomplish the task of picking up the target objects. What makes it unique is its ability to grasp objects that are either in the same plane as that of the gripper or are at a lower level. The gripper is equipped to be actuated by a single actuator. For preliminary evaluation of the gripper’s object manipulation capabilities, standard hexagonal nuts with varying weights, and sizes were selected.The success of grasping the nuts by the gripper at two different orientations were observed and studied. In this paper only one of the test cases has been shown in detail. In addition to that, a kirigami spring has been incorporated in the modified design of the gripper in order to enhance its grasping capabilities.