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Adley Pereira
Hello fellow students and Professor Brad! Welcome to my Effective Communications (MEC1281) blog where I will be sharing and uploading my work.

Design Summary Analysis - Final Submission


The article "This soft robotic gripper can screw in your light bulbs for you" (University of California - San  Diego, 2017) introduces how in 2017, a team of engineers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) designed and built a soft robotic grip and its features. The soft robotic gripper is able to "pick up and manipulate objects without needing to see them and needing to be trained." (University of California - San Diego, 2017). It has three fingers made of pneumatic chambers with many degrees of freedom allowing manipulation of the held object. A smart sensing skin made of silicon rubber with embedded sensors made of conducting carbon nanotubes covers each of these three fingers. The sensing skin records and detects the nanotubes conductivity changes as the fingers bend. The data is then processed by the control board, which then creates a 3D model of the object the gripper is manipulating. There are similar grippers developed by the Distributed Robotics Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Conner-Simons, 2015) and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, (MOHESR) Iraq (Al Abeach et al, Nefti-Meziani & Davis  2017). The 3d modeling feature of the UCSD gripper makes it stand out amongst its competitors.

The 3d modeling feature of the UCSD gripper is a more advanced version of the gripper developed by MIT. The UCSD gripper has potential military applications with its ability to pick up, manipulate and identify unknown objects that can dangerous for soldiers. The UCSD gripper creates a 3D model of the object the gripper is touching by first mapping out the 2D outline of the held object. The sensors in the skin detect when the skin is in contact with the gripped object and the gripper rotates to get the outline of the gripped object. The gripper at MIT has three fingers that have sensors that can estimate the outline of an object and identify it from a database. The MIT gripper will be unable to identify foreign objects.

The UCSD gripper is more adaptable than the gripper developed by MOHESR. Its 3D modeling applications can be downsized to allow it to detect smaller object or to enter tight areas to detect outlines. The UCSD grippers fingers and sensors can be scaled down to access smaller areas and create 3D models of these areas. The MOHESR gripper has pneumatic muscles that “form the actual fingers of the gripper as well as providing the force to power them” (Al Abeach et al, Nefti-Meziani & Davis 2017). This allows the gripper to “deform to its physical environment, for example, if inserted into a pipe” (Al Abeach et al, Nefti-Meziani & Davis 2017). What this means is that the MOHESR gripper has fingers that use pneumatic tubes shape and power itself. These fingers can also fit and adapt to the size required.
In conclusion, the UCSD gripper would be an invaluable asset in the engineering industry. The applications of the UCSD gripper can be used in situations that are volatile and need precision, for example, surgeons and chemists. Another potential application of the soft robotic gripper would be in Quality Control as the soft robotic gripper is able to detect any undesired features in the production line. With such unique features such as 3D modeling and object manipulation, the soft robotic gripper will be instrumental in the future of engineering.

References
PhysOrg (2017, October 10) This soft robotic gripper can screw in your light bulbs for you. https://phys.org/news/2017-10-soft-robotic-gripper-bulbs.html?utm_source=TrendMD&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Phys.org_TrendMD_1
Conner-Simmons A. (2015, September 30) Soft robotic gripper can pick up and identify wide array of objects. https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/soft-robotic-gripper-can-pick-and-identify-wide-array-objects
Al Abeach L.A.T., Nefti-Meziani S., & Davis S. ,(2017, September 1) Design of a variable stiffness soft dexterous gripper Soft Robotics, 274 - 284. http://doi.org/10.1089/soro.2016.0044



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