soft_solution

Soft robotic gripper design project for university CAD course, completed in Fall 2023.

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Table of Contents

• soft_solution
  • 1 Overview
  • 2 Design
  • 3 Final Prototype
  • 4 Setup
  • 5 Future Improvements

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1 Overview

Soft Solution is a Python script designed to generate STL files for soft robotic grippers, fingers, and molds for production. It facilitates the rapid creation of unique, compliant robotic designs by combining smaller CAD segments. This project was developed as part of the final project for Computer-Aided Design (MECE3030U) taught by Dr. Aaron Yurkewich, titled "Soft Robotic Exoskeleton for Tremor Suppression".

Example output:

Gripper	Cavity Mold	Bottom Seal Mold

The script generates the STL file for the final design, along with three molds: one for the cuts, one for the cavities and channels, and one for the bottom seal.

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2 Design

The script operates on the principle that soft robotic pneumatic actuators are typically composed of repeating patterns of components. Optimizing such actuator designs often involves modifying these repeating patterns. Remodeling an entire gripper or finger for simple changes, such as adjusting the thickness of bellow walls, can be time-consuming and challenging.

This script aims to streamline prototyping and enable the rapid generation of varied designs for different-sized grippers and fingers, catering to applications in compliant robotics and exoskeleton development.

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3 Final Prototype

The final prototype consisted of a single gripper, cast in Dragon Skin 10 NV Silicone using a PLA 3D-printed mold, created with the help of this script and manually controlled using plastic pneumatic tubing and a syringe.

Mold Top View	Mold Angled View

Stage 1 Mold Cavities	Stage 2 Mold Base Seal

Gripper Unpressurized	Gripper Pressurized

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4 Setup

Before running any code, ensure all required Python packages are installed using the command below.

pip install -r requirements.txt

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5 Future Improvements

Potential script improvements identified toward the end of the project:

• Generate STLs from a CSV of finger/gripper dimensions.
• Introduce adjustable pattern components for greater customization.
• Implement spline calculations and graphing to analyze maximum bending and expansion.