Development of an articulated gripper for an underwater ROV

Abstract

An adaptive multifinger gripper system was developed for underwater ROV. The system, named The Artifact 'K' apture Operator (TAKO) gripper, provides soft and adaptive envelope grasp with three articulated fingers. Each finger comprises five segments and performs like an octopus tentacle. The gripper has 15 segments in total, yet they are coordinately driven by one single motor and tendon mechanisms. This design allows the gripper system compact, light weight, and less expensive. The TAKO gripper is mounted on an underwater ROV named Triton that is a research oriented test platform developed at Santa Clara University. The TAKO-Triton integrated test was carried out successfully for the artifact pick up operation from the bottom of the water.