German Future Prize 2010: Bionic Handling Assistant

Starting with the principle of an elephant's trunk, Festo and the Fraunhofer IPA collaborated to construct the Bionic Handling Assistant using additive production technologies. Drawing on the fundamentals of bionics, the researchers transferred natural construction principles to a robotic system, creating a unique handling system that achieves humanoid lightness of touch, dexterity, and flexibility.

The Bionic Handling Assistant consists of an artificial arm, a wrist, and a gripper with three fingers. The innovation lies in the device's enormous flexibility. With its flexible movement sequences, this precision gripping device can respond to contact with humans, first decreasing pressure and then reapplying it straight away. The exceptional flexibility and sensitivity of its gripper enables the biomechatronic assistant to handle raw eggs, tomatoes or a glass of water just as carefully as it does a human being. A sophisticated pneumatic system drives the movements if its artificial limbs. The Bionic Handling Assistant can be used in all areas in which people are reliant on the support of machines. These include not only medical technology, rehabilitation, and care of the disabled, but also agriculture and private households.

  
The Fraunhofer IPA contributed two solutions to the Assistant: the R&D know-how required to deploy a bellow as an actuator, and the technology of additive production. The exceptional versatility of the novel arm is largely attributable to its extremely lightweight design, which the Fraunhofer researchers achieved with a 3D printing process. Step by step, thin layers of pliable plastic are applied over one another and melted with a laser. Festo used this method to construct the entire handling system, including the gripper and all moving parts.

Several team members were nominated for the Future Prize 2010 on the basis of their outstanding scientific and technical innovations:

Dr.-Ing. Peter Post, Festo AG & Co. KG
Dipl.-Ing. Markus Fischer, Festo AG & Co. KG
Dipl.-Ing. Andrzej Grzesiak, Fraunhofer IPA
 

Peter Post, who heads up the R&D project at Festo; Markus Fischer, who is responsible for corporate design at the Esslingen-based mechanical engineering company, and was instrumental in setting up the Bionic Learning Network, in which companies and universities can cooperate on the implementation of technical concepts that take their cue from nature; and Andrzej Grzesiak, who is head of the Additive Production Group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA.

The Handling Assistant was developed within the Bionic Learning Network, and the three nominees were supported by a team comprising staff of the IPA and Festo AG & Co. KG.

Background work was also carried out by the entire Additive Production & Digital Printing Technology Group of the Fraunhofer IPA, who develop, install and adapt digital production technologies for innovative products.

Rapid tooling and rapid manufacturing offer tremendous potential for success in terms of quickly and efficiently translating product innovations into prototypes and small production batches.

The Fraunhofer Additive Manufacturing Alliance has earned a reputation as the largest interdisciplinary European alliance of competence for high-speed processes enabling individual manufacturing of products made of metals, plastics, ceramics and other materials.

Collaborating closely with national and international partners, the alliance develops new rapid strategies, concepts, technologies and processes to enhance the performance and competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises. Its advanced rapid methods and tools enable it to support all major sectors of industry: p.e. the automotive and aerospace industries, mechanical engineering and machine tools, medicine and medical engineering.