A flexure-based gripper for small-scale manipulation

A small-scale flexure-based gripper was designed for manipulation tasks req uiring precision position and force control. The gripper is actuated by a p iezoelectric ceramic stack actuator and utilizes strain gages to measure bo th the gripping force and displacement. The position and force bandwidths w ere designed for ten Hertz and one hundred Hertz, respectively, in order to afford human-based teleoperative transparency. The gripper serves effectiv ely as a one degree-of-freedom investigation of compliant mechanism design for position and force controlled micromanipulation. Data is presented that characterizes the microgripper performance under both pure position and pu re force control, followed by a discussion of the attributes and limitation s of flexure-based design.