A fast actuated soft gripper based on shape memory alloy wires

Abstract The application of shape memory alloy (SMA) actuated soft grippers is limited by their slow recovery speed. In order to further expand their application range, as one of the solutions to address this limitation, this paper proposes a fast actuated soft gripper based on SMA wire active heat dissipation and elastic rib combination to meet the rapid actuation and recovery. The structure primarily consists of a heat dissipation module capable of winding SMA wire and a soft structure resembling a scorpion tail with embedded supper elastic SMA wire. The geometric structure model, dynamics and SMA constitutive model and finite element model of the soft gripper are established, and the lateral deformation of soft bionic scorpion tail end is analyzed through simulations and experiments. In addition, the force in designed soft gripper tip and its ability to grasp different objects are also studied through experiments. The results show that the addition of a cooling fan increased the recovery rate by about 25%, and the force in soft bionic scorpion tail end can reach about 0.12 N. The designed soft gripper can successfully grasp objects with different softness, shape, size and weight. It lays a theoretical foundation and technical support for the development of soft grippers actuated by SMA in the future.