Campus Access Only
All rights reserved. This publication is intended for use solely by faculty, students, and staff of University of the Pacific. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, now known or later developed, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author or the publisher.
Date of Award
2013
Document Type
Thesis - Pacific Access Restricted
Degree Name
Master of Science in Engineering (M.S.Eng.)
Department
Engineering
First Advisor
Elizabeth Basha
First Committee Member
Chi-Wook Lee
Second Committee Member
Jennifer Ross
Abstract
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.
Pages
88
ISBN
9781303591402
Recommended Citation
Van Hoosear, Christopher A.. (2013). Surface hardness classification via unmanned aerial vehicles gripper finger deflection. University of the Pacific, Thesis - Pacific Access Restricted. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/231
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
To access this thesis/dissertation you must have a valid pacific.edu email address and log-in to Scholarly Commons.
Find in PacificSearch Find in ProQuestIf you are the author and would like to grant permission to make your work openly accessible, please email
Rights Statement
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
