Design and Experimental Research of Hydraulically Driven Bionic Venus Flytrap Flexible Gripper

With the development of science and technology and the needs of life, flexible gripper technology has gradually become a research hotspot because of its safety and compliance. As a plant that can realize envelope grasping, the movement characteristics of flytrap grass have strong reference for the grasping movement of flexible grippers. According to the soft mesh structure and the deformation mechanism of the Venus flytrap, this paper proposed a hydraulically driven bionic Venus flytrap flexible gripper structure composed of double bionic blades. Firstly, a mathematical model of the relationship between the bending angle and the pressure of the fully embedded single-column grid was analyzed based on the simulation model, and then the relationship between the bending angle and the pressure of the multi-column grid was analyzed based on the simulation model, and the working pressure of the flexible gripper was determined to be 0.040 MPa. The analysis of simulation results shows that the bending angle change and force of the incomplete edge mesh are greater than that of the complete mesh, which proves that the incomplete mesh is the weak point of the strength of the flexible gripper. The bending experiments and closing force experiments of the hydraulically actuated and pneumatically actuated bionic blades were carried out, and it was proved that the performance of hydraulic actuation was better than that of pneumatic actuation under working pressure, and the ready pressure of the flexible gripper was determined to be 0.010 MPa. Finally, adaptive experiments show that the designed flexible gripper can grasp objects of different shapes, and the maximum load capacity is confirmed to reach 304.3 g. The hydraulically driven bionic Venus flytrap flexible gripper proposed in this paper can provide an effective solution for live insect capture and non-destructive harvesting, as well as a theoretical and technical basis for the research and development of bionic plant robots.