US 5,541,485 A · Reactive robotic gripper

Abstract

A parallel jaw robotic gripper and method for operating the gripper to grasp an unknown object are disclosed. The parallel jaw gripper of the present invention includes two pairs of light sources and sensors mounted on opposing extensions of each gripper. The light sources and detectors on each jaw are used to produce and detect the interruption of a pair of parallel light beams and/or a pair of crossed light beams by the object to be grasped. The gripper is rotated, translated, and/or closed in accordance with the detected status of the light beams in a simple table-driven manner by which the gripper is positioned to grasp the object with a stable grasping configuration. The gripper of the present invention can grasp an object of an unknown shape without disturbing or touching the object before grasping it.

Claims16

Dependent claims

A reactive robotic system comprising:

a robotic gripper with first and second jaws for grasping an object therebetween, each jaw including:
a first jaw extension provided with at least two light sources, and
a second jaw extension provided with at least two light detectors,
which sources and detectors of each jaw are mounted so as to generally face each other so that the detectors detect whether light-beams emitted from the sources are blocked by the object;
and
a reactive control system coupled to the robotic gripper for controlling the gripper to perform a predetermined action in accordance with each detected state of the light-beams so that after a series of actions, the gripper is in a configuration to stably grasp the object at a local minimum diameter of the object.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Reactive robotic gripper

Life of this patent

Reactive robotic gripper

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims16