A low-cost 3D printed electromagnetic gripper for robotic arms

Grasping, carrying, and placing objects are fundamental capabilities and common operations for robots and robotic manipulators. To ensure secure grasping of objects with a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and materials, various sensors and control strategies are also necessary. In this paper, an electromagnetic robotic gripper is proposed. The exploitation of electromagnetism principles for grasping is not new in the literature, but the proposed design innovation aims at proposing an open-source and low-cost solution that can be 3D printed. The developed prototype was tested by performing pick and place operations on samples of progressively increasing mass. Finally, a thermodynamic analysis was conducted to determine the steady-state external temperature of the shell and identify its limitations.