The most important source of inspiration for artificial gripping systems are natural gripping systems

Abstract

The main role of a gripping biosystem is to grasp-grip a body-object, which can then be transferred from one place to another. Gripping biosystems can be very simple, like two areas of soft biological tissue that can grasp a body nearby, such as the extremities of the elephant's trunk, but also very complex as the human hand, considered the best gripping biosystem. Some gripping biosystems are adaptated to increase the safety of the grip such as the octopus arm which is provided with suction cups to compensate for the reduced friction in the aquatic environment. The paper first classifies biogrippers according to the grasp-grip method through which we distinguish gripping: by grasp, shellfish-like claws, beak, claws, jaws and fingers. Suggestive examples are given for each case, and in some cases even artificial variants that were more or less inspired by natural biogrippers considered as models. The few details of the mathematical modeling of the human hand grip can be extrapolated to all existing biogrippers that can be identified. The paper tries for the first time an exhaustive presentation of biogrippers in order to stimulate their in-depth study and to use as many of the natural gripping solutions and some of their features to optimize the artificial grippers used especially in robots.