A Quadratic-Programming Approach for the Real-Time Control of the Fingers Position in Industrial Pneumatic Grippers

Industrial grippers are generally either electric or pneumatic, with the latter being preferred as their air-based functioning guarantees many advantages such as cost effectiveness and reduced encumbrance. Despite the very large employment, pneumatic grippers do not yet offer performance beyond the open/closed behavior in the majority of cases. Pneumatic grippers mounted on industrial robotic arms are commonly rigid as high forces might be required during the grasping operations. The poorness of the control strategies for the grasping force, as well as for the fingers position, does not match the great advancement that robotics obtained in the last years. Therefore, this letter intends to deliver a new control algorithm for the control of pneumatic grippers. The proposed algorithm permits to finely control the position of the gripper fingers, exploiting a quadratic-programming function to minimize the controller output. Different experiments are shown to demonstrate the algorithm effectiveness.