Soft robotic grasping has rapidly spread through the academic robotics community in recent years and pushed into industrial applications. At the same time, multimaterial 3D printing has become widely available, enabling the monolithic manufacture of devices containing rigid and elastic sections. We propose a novel design technique that leverages both technologies and can automatically design bespoke soft robotic grippers for fruit-picking and similar applications. We demonstrate the novel topology optimisation formulation that generates multi-material soft grippers, can solve internal and external pressure boundaries, and investigate methods to produce air-tight designs. Compared to existing methods, it vastly expands the searchable design space while increasing simulation accuracy.

翻译：软体机器人抓取技术近年来在学术机器人领域迅速普及，并逐步向工业应用拓展。与此同时，多材料3D打印技术已广泛普及，使得包含刚性段与弹性段的装置可实现一体化制造。我们提出一种融合上述两种技术的新型设计方法，能够自动设计适用于水果采摘及类似场景的定制化软体机器人夹爪。本研究展示了新型拓扑优化公式，可生成多材料软体夹爪，能够处理内外部压力边界条件，并探索了气密性设计的实现方法。与现有方法相比，该技术极大扩展了可搜索的设计空间，同时提升了仿真精度。