Grasping leather plies by Bernoulli grippers

摘要

The automated grasping of leather products presents many critical aspects mainly due to their very low stiffness and to the possibility of producing imprints on their delicate surfaces. To overcome such problems, this paper proposes the use of contactless grippers instead of more traditional vacuum cups or fingered grippers. In particular, the main objective of this investigation is the measurement of the performance of different gripper configurations whose lifting force is generated by a high-speed air flow passing between the gripper and the leather ply.