Design, modeling and control of a soft gripper with TCP actuator using image processing

Artificial muscles have gained importance due to their high deformability, which is used in soft robots. In this article, to further exploit and understand the behavior of TCP muscles, as well as to control these muscles more easily, we mathematically model the stimulus, which includes a model to understand the temperature behavior of muscles with changes in flow and amount of displacement due to changes in temperature and amount of external force. is. By designing a soft gripper and applying the necessary restrictions, we get the force needed to move this gripper. Then we obtain the kinematic model of the finger to obtain the bending angle due to the displacement of the muscle which is connected to the fingers and gripper by the cable. We also check the muscle’s ability to perform this movement. In the next step, programming and implementation of a simple model of turning on and off the heating and cooling system to create expansion and contraction in the muscle is done by image processing on the Arduino controller to control the system. Using the obtained models and taking into account different and important values in the models, we extracted the related diagrams and checked and compared them. From these results, we can point out the changes in the temperature behavior and movement of the muscle with the change in the input current as well as the type of alloy used, the controllability of the muscle, and the ability of the muscle to move the gripper.