Teleoperated Parallel Gripper

Project Description

The teleoperated parallel gripper is a modular gripper designed and built for the Columbia Robotic Manipulation and Mobility (ROAM) lab under Prof. Matei Ciocarlie. The gripper was developed for part of a larger project to build a bimanual teleoperation station, inspired by the ALOHA project. Currently, the grippers are mounted onto a UR5 and Sawyer arm. The station is used to collect teleoperated data to train a neural network diffusion model for autonomous dextrous manipulation.

Methods

Designed and built a modular parallel gripper and a teleoperator controller
Created a 4-bar sliding linkage to convert the rotational motion of the Dynamixel servo to the linear motion of the grippers
Conducted kinematic and static force analysis on the linkage system
Optimized the linkage via stochastic gradient descent to minimize torque requirements on servo
Designed a custom TPU-printed detachable fins with geometry that allows for compliant gripping on rigid objects; increased finger contact surface area and friction for more effective grasping
Designed an ergonomic and intuitive teleoperator controller to operate the gripper
Used a 1-turn potentiometer embedded at the base pivot of the controller to map the motion of the controller to the gripper
Created and implemented a communication protocol via serial communication between the controller and gripper over Arduino boards following the publisher-subcriber model

Media

Parallel Gripper

Teleoperator Controller

CAD Model

Kinematic Analysis