Simulation of highly deformable materials behavior on the covering of robotic hands

• Grant number: 10/06877-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: June 01, 2010
• End date: May 31, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Mechanical Engineering
• Principal Investigator: Adriano Almeida Gonçalves Siqueira
• Grantee: Augusto Hirao Shigueoka
• Host Institution: Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos (EESC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This scientific initiation project proposes a simulation on the behavior of a highly deformable material in the covering of a robotic hand. The method employed will be the Long Element Method (LEM), which discretizes a body in several elastic bar elements. Since this is a relatively new method, researchs were carried out and applied to simpler bodies, for instance, spheres, bars and cubes. In an attempt to employ it on robotic manipulators, it would be too difficult to represent a humanoid hand, since besides of the complex format, there is a need to include a technique that incorporate the rigid body movements. It is more convenient, thus, to divide the structure in smaller, simpler bodies, i.e. ellipsoids, cylinders and blocks, leaving the Mechanisms Theory developed for robotics responsible for those several subelements movements and cohesion. We intend to firstly create the LEM algorithm, which will be responsible for determining dimensional changes; next, the rigid body mechanism of the robotic hand; at last, we will integrate both in order to simulate the robotic hand. We do not intend to create each one of the robotic hand structures; we will import them through the STL file format instead. This file format represent a geometric solid through several triangles, which eases the LEM utilization, once the solid is previously discretized. The LEM algorithm will be written in C++, using the OpenGL API in order to show the results in a deformed structure. (AU)