Fabric Handling with Passive Actuator Less Grippers
Date:
Conference invited talk at 2025 WRC Symposium on Advanced Robotics and Automation (WRC SARA), Beijing, China
- Paper Abstract
- The automation of fabric destacking and pick-and-place operations is critical for garment manufacturing. Conventional grasping solutions, such as pinching, suction, electro-adhesive, or needle-based grippers, are fundamentally limited by their reliance on active actuation and external power sources. We propose the Passive Actuator-Less Gripper (PALGRIP), a novel, fully mechanical end-effector for fabric manipulation. PALGRIP utilizes an internal mechanism that converts from the relative movement between the housing of the gripper and the fingers to open-and-close motion of the fingers, enabling it to grasp a topmost single fabric from a fabric stack without requiring any onboard power or tethered supplies. By its passive, power-free design, PALGRIP facilitates low-cost, simplified system integration, presenting a significant advancement in accessible automation for the textile industry. In this talk, the concept and mechanical design of PALGRIP and its application will be presented.