Towards the Design of a Human-Inspired Gripper for Textile Manipulation

Robots are fast becoming part of our daily lives, assisting us in a variety of applications. Rapid integration of autonomous agents into our routines has led to the exploration of novel research applications in robotics. One such area that has seen a recent resurgence is the manipulation of deformable objects such as textiles, an action which is simple to humans, but has been shown to be more challenging for robots. A simple fabric grasping action alone can be influenced by a multitude of parameters such as the end-effector utilised, the environment and the state of the grasping target. Previous research in designing end-effectors for deformable manipulation is discussed, arguing the need for approaching fabric manipulation from a human and hand-centric perspective to discover unique solutions. We then introduce a new approach of grasping deformable material through a novel robotic gripper design. A preliminary evaluation of the proposed end-effector’s design and ability to grasp material is presented and discussed, along with an outline of future research goals.