Author

Date of Award

10-24-2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Systems Engineering

First Advisor

Andrew Wright

Abstract

An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) can carry packages to locations that are unreachable by an autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) using a suitable gripper system. A novel gripping system for grasping corrugated boxes which has the potential to be mounted on a UAV is presented. The proposed gripping system uses two pairs of perpendicularly mounted linear actuators to move the end effectors, geared such that they are operated with a single control input. The mechanism is designed to handle position and orientation errors of the target object automatically in the specified grasping zone without the need of a control system. The four-sided grasping approach increases the allowable weight relative to a two-sided grasping approach before the crushing force based on Edge Crush Test (ECT) is reached. Experimental validations were conducted on the proof-of-concept prototype to investigate the maximum successfully lifted weight and the automatic handling of position and orientation errors.

Included in

Robotics Commons

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