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Completed TRL 3 (started at 2, targeting 3)
Compliant and high-performance robotic grippers have strong potential to support NASA's missions -- they can be mounted on rovers to effectively collect samples in space or safely interact with astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) due to their inherent compliance. However, existing grippers powered by soft and compliant actuation mechanisms are predominantly weak and slow, and rigid and hard actuator-driven grippers are often heavy and bulky. With its large translational force, power density, energy efficiency, and muscle-like compliant structure, the twisted string actuator (TSA) holds exciting promise for robotic grippers and manipulators. We recently created a compliant and self-sensing TSA that exhibits high-force, high-bandwidth output by incorporating stretchable and conductive super-coiled polymer (SCP) strings into TSA. In this project, key innovations will be created to further enable a compliant and high-performance TSA-driven gripper promising for space applications by (1) conducting the first characterization and comparison study to confirm the strong promise of the proposed compliant TSAs over conventional TSAs and electromagnetic motors,(2) designing a compliant and self-sensing TSA-powered high-performance gripper, (3) fabricating and testing the developed gripper, and finally, (4) proposing and experimentally validating position and velocity control of the TSA-driven gripper using self-sensing based feedback signals.
In this project, key innovations will be created to further enable a compliant and high-performance twisted string actuator (TSA) driven gripper promising for space applications.
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