The PI and his team have previously designed a soft hydraulic gripper inspired by the seahorse tail for underwater manipulation. In this project, the UG students will explore the effect of key design parameters on the performance of the soft hydraulic gripper. The students will deploy additive manufacturing to fabricate a range of seahorse-inspired soft grippers with varying design parameters. Then, the students will build an experimental setup to characterize the different designs in terms of holding force. The students will select the most suitable design for deployment on a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) and demonstrate its performance in an underwater trash collection task.

This project is related to the Sustainable Smart Campus project "Sustainable Smart Marine Grid (SSMG) - Solar-powered base stations for continuous underwater surveying and trash cleaning”.