Design, modeling and test of a novel compliant orthogonal displacement amplification mechanism for the compact micro-grasping system

In the compact micro-grasping system, the combination of precisely orthogonal movement transformation, displacement amplification and simple structure is important. The typical solution of the combination issue requires bidirectional symmetric input forces/displacements. However, under a certain driving condition, numerous actuators used in micro-manipulation only supply unidirectional input froce/displacement for the driven mechanism, which makes the typical solution infeasible. In this study, a novel compliant orthogonal displacement amplification mechanism (DAM) is proposed to solve the combination issue for numerous actuators used in micro-grasping. The proposed mechanism is a triangulation amplification-based mechanism with undetermined structural parameters. The number of the undetermined parameters and the solution principle are analyzed. The design process is presented. Finite element analysis (FEA) is used to verify the design method. The FEA results show that, for the design examples, the errors evaluating the orthogonal movement transformation are smaller than 0.56 % and 0.15 % respectively, and the displacement amplification ratios are larger than 4.6. The orthogonal displacement amplification is realized. A precise model of the displacement amplification ratio is derived. The dynamic performances of the proposed orthogonal DAM are modeled and FEA verified. Furthermore, a microgripper utilizing the proposed mechanism is presented. The performances of the gripper, including the displacement amplification and the parallel movement of the jaws, are verified by FEA and experiments.