<p> The purpose of this thesis is to ascertain the feasibility of using strain gauges attached to a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) gripper to determine, upon impact, the hardness of a landing site. We design and fabricate a four finger gripper that uses a rotary component to convert the rotational motion of a servo to the linear motion of the finger assemblies. We functionally test a gripper prototype made from rapid-prototype material. We conduct three experiments to test the gripper's functionality. The first experiment tests the gripper's ability to grasp, lift, and release a centered payload, and the gripper performed with overall success rates of 91%, 100%, and 87% respectively. The second experiment tests the gripper's ability to self-align, lift and release the payload and the gripper performed with overall success rates of 99%, 100%, and 96% respectively. The third experiment tests the functional durability of the gripper, and it performed without error for 5000 open/close cycles. </p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:1548752 |
| Date | 17 January 2014 |
| Creators | Van Hoosear, Christopher A. |
| Publisher | University of the Pacific |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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