High Integrity Container (HIC) made of polymer concrete was developed for the efficient treatment and safe disposal of radioactive spent resin and concentrate waste in consideration of the disposal requirements of domestic disposal sites. Permission for application of Polymer Concrete High Integrity Container (PC-HIC) to the domestic nuclear power plants (NPPs) has been completed or is under examination by the regulatory agency. In the case of 860 L PC-HIC for very-low-level-waste (VLLW) or low low-level-waste (LLW), the application of four representative NPPs has been approved, and the license for extended application to the rest NPPs is also almost completed. A licensing review is also underway to apply 510 L PC-HIC for intermediate and low-level-waste (ILLW) to representative nuclear power plants. In order to handle and efficiently store and manage PC-HICs and high-dose PCHIC packages, a gripper device that can be remotely operated and has excellent safety is essential, and the introduction of NPPs is urgent. The conventional gripper device developed by the PC-HIC manufacturer for lifting test to evaluate the structural integrity of PC-HIC requires a rather wide storage interval due to its design features, and does not have a passive safety design to handle heavy materials safely. In addition, work convenience needs to be reinforced for safety management of high radiation work. Therefore, we developed a conceptual design for a gripper device with a new concept to minimize the work space by reflecting on-site opinions on the handling and storage management conditions of radioactive waste in NPPs, and to enhances work safety with the passive safety design by the weight of the package and the function of checking the normal seating of the device and the normal operation of the grip by the detector/indicator, and to greatly improves the work efficiency and convenience with the wireless power supply function by rechargeable battery and the remote control function by camera and wireless monitoring & control system. Through design review by experts in mechanical system, power supply and instrumentation & control fields and further investigations on the usage conditions of PC-HICs, it is planned to facilitate preparations for the application of PC-HIC to domestic NPPs by securing the technical basis for a gripper device that can be used safely and efficiently and seeking ways to introduce it in a timely manner.

Recently, the robotic hand sector is widely utilized throughout the entire machine industry, where gripping mechanism is gradually becoming more complex and standardized. In this study, studies were conducted to hold irregular, unstructured objects with simpler, more manageable operating principles based on compliant mechanics. In fact, it used the principle of buckling which is not commonly used in mechanical design to provide stable grasping force without giving any damage to objects with uncertain magnitude and rigidity. By using CFM(constant force mechanism) based on the principle of buckling, the force of the object and the contact surface is fixed evenly across the segments, providing a stable grasping force to the object. Also, a bar that serves as a linear guide prevents the hand from buckling to unwanted direction gives elaboration to the hand. With a simpler principle, the lower unit price and higher applicability, there is little friction in the mechanism, and it focused on creating a lightweight hand, which have significance for about 90% of excellent gripping performance.

In robotic harvesting, a gripper to manipulate the fruits needs to be attached to the robot system. We proposed a flexible robot gripper that can actively respond to the shape of an object such as fruits in the previous work. However, we found that there is a possibility of not being reliably gripped when the object slides during contact with a finger. In this paper, the improved gripper design is proposed to fundamentally solve the problems of the previous gripper. The position of the finger and the maximum closed position are changed, and the design improvement is performed to increase the grip stability by changing the installation angle of the link portion of the finger. Based on the improved design, a modified gripper is fabricated by 3-D printing, and then gripping experiments are performed on spherical object and fruit model object. It is shown that the gripper can stably grip the objects without excessive bending of the finger link of the gripper. The contact pressure between the finger and the surface of the object is measured, and it is verified that it is a sufficiently small pressure that does not cause damage to the fruit. Therefore, the proposed gripper is expected to be successfully applied in harvesting.

This paper proposes a Dual Controller System for Precision Control (DCSPC) for control of the gripper. The DCSPC consists of two subsystems, CDSP (Controller based DSP) and CARM (Controller based ARM processor). The CDSP is developed on a DSP processor and controls the gripping motor and LVDT. In particular, the CARM is implemented using Linux and ARM processor according to recent research related to open-source. The robot for high-precision assembly is divided into the robot control and the gripper control section and controls CARM and CDSP systems respectively. In this paper, we also proposed and measured the performance of communication API. As a result, it is expected to recognize improvements in communication between CARM and the robot controller, and will continue to conduct relevant research among other commercial robot controllers.

This paper dealt with a pincers-type gripper being able to grip a heavy-weighted cylindrical object having various size with itself. This gripper should be designed to seize the objects without any change of jaw shape. Grasping achieved equilibrium after the object slipped on the jaw while grasping it. To cope with this situation, we suggested the slip considered gripper design procedure based on grasping equilibrium. The obtained slip condition can provide a limit friction coefficient depending on the contact angle when initiating contact between jaw and object. Consequently, the gripping force and the required actuating force can be calculated. In order to verify the proposed slip condition, the simulations were performed using a dynamic software.

In this paper, a robotic system which consists of a precision manipulator and a micro gripper for a micro system assembly is presented. By the experiment, we proved that the developed the system gives acceptable performance when minute operations. Developed the micro-nano robot is actuated by newly proposed modular revolute and prismatic actuators. As an end-effector of this system, micro gripper is designed and fabricated with MEMS technology and the displacement of jaw is up to 142.8 micro meter. We think that new robot system will be appropriate for micro system assembly tasks and life science application