Model-based design of granulate-based grippers for the flexible handling of deformable objects in automated production

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Klaus Dröder; Professor Dr.-Ing. Arno Kwade
• Subject Area: Production Automation and Assembly Technology ; Automation, Mechatronics, Control Systems, Intelligent Technical Systems, Robotics
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 450839725

Automated handling is one of the core challenges for productive and efficient production systems. The increasing product individualization and the resulting high variant diversity require a high degree of form-flexibility of handling systems. In particular, the consideration of an entire product life cycle requires flexible handling solutions for disassembly and recycling aspects, which must be at least partially automated to ensure an efficient implementation and a high productivity. Therefore, the demand for future, efficient, automatable and flexible handling processes is substantial. Due to their inherent form-adaptable characteristics, granulate-based gripping systems offer enormous potential for handling various geometries. However, an overarching comprehension of their functionality and the required boundary conditions are necessary to assess their applicability within individual use cases. Therefore, in the first period of the present project (DFG project no. 450839725), the fundamental functionality of a specific gripper principle, which enables the handling of a high number of variants, was investigated for the design of a granulate-based gripping system conceived at TU Braunschweig. For this purpose, the handling of rigid, flat objects was considered and, in addition to the design of the gripper, the effects of handling object geometries and adapted gripping strategies were investigated. The investigations enabled a comprehensive knowledge on the basis of a combined empirical and numerical approach enabling the development of design rules. However, in the reality of assembly and disassembly tasks it can be assumed that a relevant number of objects deform elastically during handling due to the prevalence of polymers and the weight-optimized components. When interacting with conventional gripping principles, these objects exhibit a major risk of detaching during the handling process due to the increased complexity of their deformability. Therefore, a comprehensive re-evaluation of the problem and a transfer of the previously established knowledge to the new dimension of elastically deformable gripping objects and the investigation of the effects is necessary in order to achieve a model-based design and a holistic understanding of the interaction of a granulate-based gripper with deformable handling objects. Thus, a complete reappraisal of the expanded research issue and a transfer of the gained knowledge to the new dimension of elastically deformable gripping objects and the investigation of the resulting effects is necessary in order to achieve a model-based design and a holistic understanding of the interaction of a granulate-based gripper with deformable handling objects.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants