Design and Development of Compactly Folding Parallel OpenClose Gripper with Wide Stroke A novel compact parallel gripper with wide stroke is proposed in this paper. Conventional parallel grippers with linear guide mechanisms have been widely utilized as end effectors of robots, especially in industrial fields, because of its simple mechanism and low cost nature. However, the width of the gripper is larger than the stroke due to the mechanical structure of its linear guide mechanism. When objects with various dimensions need to be grasped by a gripper, the width of the gripper is determined by the largest distance between fingers necessary for grasping all of the objects. This makes the collision avoidance of robot difficult even when handling a small object compared to the width of the gripper. The novel compact gripper proposed in this article has three features: long finger stroke with compact dimensions, fingersxe2x80x99 parallel motion along a single linear trajectory, and driven by a single actuator. The finger backlash and the gripping force of the proposed mechanism are analyzed, and the parallel gripper with the mechanism is designed based on the analyses. A prototype gripper with minimum width 64 mm, whose maximum fingers stroke is 121 mm, is developed, and experimental results illustrate the performance of the developed gripper.

Kinematics, Design and Experimental Validation of a Novel Parallel Robot for TwoFingered Dexterous Manipulation Twofingered manipulation robotic systems are widely used in many application sand notably at small scales. The commonly employed solution is based on the attachment of a gripper on a robot. This paper introduces a new eight degrees of freedom (DoF) mechanism intended for twofingered dexterous manipulation. The eight DoFs are obtained via a parallel architecture moved by eight actuators that are attached to the base of the robot. The novelty lies in the use of a 2DoF configurable platform that insures two relative rotations of the gripper jaws (opening and twisting) in addition to the 6DoF Cartesian movements. The paper presents the kinematics and the design of a proofofconcept able to grasp, roll, translate and rotate objects in a single compact design. A prototype is operated to manipulate and insert a 2mm screw.