Flexure Hinge Design and Optimization for Compact Anthropomorphic Grippers Made via Metal Additive Manufacturing

Flexure-based grippers offer an attractive alternative to conventional grippers used in robotics and automation. However, most existing designs appear to suffer from insufficient range of motion, loadability, and support stiffness. This article presents an approach to obtain well-performing flexure hinges for compact anthropomorphic grippers made via metal additive manufacturing. We propose a flexure hinge architecture that achieves a high range of motion despite the challenging combination of a small design space, high Young’s modulus, and limited minimum feature size. Furthermore, we present an optimization procedure to generate suitable tendon-driven designs with high loadability. Using this framework, a flexure hinge with an outer diameter of 21.5 mm and range of motion of ±30 deg is synthesized. For the range of 0–30 deg, simulations show a lateral loadability of 52.5–18.6 N and lateral support stiffness of 12,309–11,130 N/m, determined at a gripper interface located 41.2 mm from the hinge pivot axis. Experiments confirm a loadability of at least 15.4 N and determined a stiffness of 8982 to 9727 N/m for same conditions. The results show that the flexure hinge architecture has large potential for a wide range of applications, while in combination with the optimization procedure, superior designs for tendon-driven grippers can be obtained.