An analytical method for design of compliant grippers with macro/micro manipulation and assembly applications

A compliant gripper gains its dextral manipulation by the flexnral motion of its fingers. It is a preferable device to grippers with actuations because of reduced fabrication complexity and increased structural reliability. The prediction of contact forces and deflected shape are essential to the design of a compliant gripper. We present here a formulation based on Nonlinear Constrained Optimization (NCO) techniques to analyze contact problems of compliant grippers. For a planar compliant gripper this formulation essentially reduces the domain of discretization by one dimension. Hence it requires simpler formulation and is computationally more efficient than other methods such as finite element analysis. As this method is rather generic, its use will facilitate design analysis and optimization of compliant devices. We illustrate these attractive features with two types of compliant grippers; macro-handling and micro-assembly applications.