Design and test of a compact compliant gripper using the Scott–Russell mechanism

Abstract

This paper presents the design, modeling, fabrication, and test of a monolithic compliant gripper for micro-manipulation applications. A compact compliant mechanism that enables in-principle straight-line parallel jaw motion is obtained, by combining the Scott–Russell mechanism and the parallelogram mechanism. The right-circular corner-filleted (RCCF) flexure hinge is adopted to achieve a large displacement of lumped-compliance joints. A pseudo-rigid-body model (PRBM) method with the help of the virtual work principle is performed to obtain parametric analytical models including the amplification coefficient and kinetostatics. Finite element analysis (FEA) is conducted to validate the analytical model and capture adverse parasitic motions of jaws. A monolithic prototype was fabricated, the test results of which show satisfactory performances.