Delicate and Precise Grasping using Kirigami

The ability to precisely and delicately handle deformable, fragile, slippery, or microscale objects remains a significant challenge for robotic grippers. In this work, through a combination of experiments and modeling, we demonstrate how the mechanical actuation of kirigami shells enables both delicate and precise grasping of a wide variety of objects. The design is geometric, so it can be adapted to many material systems, and the geometry was optimized to produce a structure with a high carrying capacity and a low actuation force. We combined individual kirigami grippers in series and in parallel to form gripper arrays capable of grasping slender rods, and simultaneously grasping multiple objects and moving them without changing their relative orientation and position. The kirigami gripper is scalable, lightweight, and can be incorporated with commercially available robotic system to perform delicate and high precision grasping.