A Gripper Capable of Screw Fastening and Gripping With a Single Driving Source

As the range of applications of robots expanded, they began to be used for complex assemblies such as screw fastening and pin assembly. Most specialized screw fastening tools are sensitive to external influences and require additional instruments to prevent screw dislodgement when working in unstructured environments. To address this challenge, we propose a screw fastening gripper (SFG) capable of screw fastening and small pin gripping with a single power source. The proposed SFG is divided into a fastening part for screw fastening and a gripper for grasping, with power distributed via a magnetic gear. It is designed to temporarily separate the gripper and fastener using the magnetic gear’s features, so it can be used to fasten screws of various lengths if necessary. Through gripping force measurements and screw fastening experiments, the proposed SFG showed sufficient performance in grasping and screw fastening.