Abstract:
The Direct Drive Hand (DDHand) project is exploring a new design philosophy for grippers. The conventional approach is to prioritize clamping force, leading to high gear ratios, slow motion, and poor transmission of force/motion signals. Instead, the DDHand prioritizes transparency: we view the gripper as a signal transmission channel, and seek high-bandwidth, high-fidelity transmission of force and motion signals in both directions. The resulting design has no gears and no springs, occupying a new quadrant in the servo gripper design space. In this presentation, I will present the direct drive gripper design philosophy, compare the performance of different design choices, describe our current design and implementation, and demonstrate a fly-by “smack and snatch” grasping motion to show the gripper’s ability to safely detect and respond quickly to variations in the task environment.

Committee:
Matthew Mason
Ralph Hollis
Aaron Johnson
Reuben Aronson