DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ADAPTIVE ROBOT GRIPPER

Abstract

The Adaptive Robot Gripper (ARG) project has the purpose of designing and producing a prototype of a universal gripper for Unilever production lines. This device is meant to have extended capability beyond their current industrial robot grippers and will provide the ability to pick up products of various shapes, sizes, and weights as well as have capability to pick up products with differing package rigidity without damage to the packaging. The ARG will be comprised of a camera system, a gripper, and emulation software. The camera system will identify the location of the product while the size and shape of the recognized item will be retrieved from stored data in the Raspberry Pi. This information will be sent to the arm and gripper so that the product will be handled carefully. The included emulation software will simulate the industrial robot arm and gripper in the manufacturing environment. The virtual simulation of the arm will show how the robot arm would respond to the location of products on a conveyer belt and show how it would orientate itself to pick up and drop each Unilever Product. This adaptability of the system will be used in the manufacturing line to increase efficiency as the lines no longer will need to stop for grip changes. This final report walks through all the aspects of project, documents all subsystems, and clearly states the data from testing.