5 New prospects: the material is compliant with food industry standards and enables a wide range of applications for the adaptive fingers of the future. Potential future uses It is conceivable that the MultiChoiceGripper can be applied wherever many different kinds of objects are gripped – for example in auxiliary robotics, for assembly tasks or in production facilities where different products are manufactured. Until now, changeover systems have often had to be used, which were fitted with different grippers. From fish fins to technical applications Even when sorting fruit and vegetables on a conveyor belt, different gripper systems are still the norm. With the adaptive FinGripper, Festo has already developed a gripping hand that can also grip sensitive objects with different contours in a gentle and form-fitting manner. For this purpose, it makes use of the natural properties of a fish’s fin – the so-called Fin Ray Effect®: it does not bend away under the influence of lateral pressure, but instead wraps itself around the point of pressure. Here, the gripping hand with the adaptive gripping fingers is demonstrated among other things by the Bionic Handling Assistant, which was awarded the Deutscher Zukunftspreis (German Future Prize) in 2010. Continuous development As part of the continuous development work carried out on the gripping finger, Festo is working on producing it using foodindustry-compliant polyurethane, which will enable it to be used in that industry. Using a holder and an adapter plate, in future the adaptive fingers will be able to be fitted to different interfaces at customers’ premises and to various grippers designed by Festo. Bionic grippers designed by Festo The adaptive gripping finger shows how a technical application is developed based on a natural phenomenon. It was used for the first time in 2009 in the Bionic Tripod. The NanoForceGripper (2011) is another bionic gripper developed by Festo and its gripping area was inspired by a gecko’s foot. The kinematics of a bird’s beak is put into operation in the PowerGripper (2012). In 2013, the developers managed to come up with the LearningGripper research platform, a gripper that is able to learn and can appropriate complex actions by itself. LearningGripper (2013) BionicTripod with FinGripper (2009) NanoForceGripper (2012)
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