A soft gripper with embedded soft sensors for extremely flexible objects*

Despite continued developments in robotics and automation technology, the garments industry has maintained a largely labor intensive manufacturing process as the handling of extremely flexible objects, such as textiles, remains challenging. Prior textile grippers have used interlocking needles, suction and electroadhesion; however, tradeoffs between textile damage, textile compatibility and actuation times have hindered widespread industrial adoption. Here we present a pneumatically actuated soft gripper that overcomes the aforementioned drawbacks through utilizing the buckling of an elastic membrane to effectively handle flexible sheets such as textiles. The gripper shows excellent single sheet separation for a wide variety of textiles, even after undergoing in excess of 40,000 cycles, and by embedding soft capacitive sensors, we are also able to deduce the success or failure of grasping and electrical properties. The gripper is also able to grip delicate sheets without causing mechanical folds or creases, suggesting promise in the field of biology and medicine. Theoretical models for the gripping and sensing mechanisms are suggested to further optimize the gripper for widespread adoption.