Design and experiment of a soft gripper with enhanced rigidity for fruit and vegetable picking

Aiming at the problems of low rigidity and low fingertip force in the field of fruit and vegetable picking in the current soft end effector, based on the multi-cavity soft end effector, a method is proposed to increase the clamping force by adding restrictive materials to the top and both sides of the cavity of the generating layer. A mathematical model was established to analyze the relationship between the end position of the actuator and the input air pressure; the Abaqus software was used to simulate and analyze the change law of the actuator’s bending angle and support reaction force; and the comparison experiment was carried out to grasp and verify. The finite element simulation and test results show that the increase of the restrictive material of the occurrence layer can not only reduce the balloon effect very well, but also can bear higher working pressure without affecting the bending performance of the actuator; the bending angle and pressure are one timing, the supporting force of the enhanced actuator is significantly greater than that of the traditional soft actuator. The maximum gripping weight of the enhanced soft gripper is about 414 g, the maximum gripping weight of the traditional soft gripper is about 108 g, and the gripping weight is about 4 times the traditional gripper.