Adjustable Platform for Exploring Soft Robotic Gripper Design

The growing importance of STEM careers and the imbalance of the demographics of people who pursue them have resulted in a myriad of outreach activities and platforms to expose students to key concepts in fun and interactive ways. Robotics is one of the primary themes of these outreach activities due to the combination of disciplines (e.g., mechanical and electrical engineering, computer science). Specifically, soft robotics, an emerging field, has become a popular topic as it is outside the expectations and experiences of most students, making it more universally accessible. In this work, we present a tendon-driven, soft-robotic gripper platform with multiple adjustable design features in order to emphasize the iterative nature of design. Students can choose the number of fingers, their distance apart, and their length and number of joints. After designing and molding the fingers themselves, threading the tendon and installing them on the base, they have the opportunity to test and iterate their design. Eleven high school girls and their teachers participated in a pilot activity, filling out a survey on the design of the platform. The surveys indicated the students found the activity a fun, interesting, and valuable learning experience, one they would recommend to their friends.