Faculty/School

Faculty of Engineering

School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics

Topic status

We're looking for students to study this topic.

Research centre

Centre for Robotics

Primary Supervisor

Dr Krishna Manaswi Digumarti
Position
Lecturer
Division / Faculty
Faculty of Engineering

Overview

Many goods are packaged in sheets of paper. Automating this task with a robot is difficult for two reasons. One is that picking up and manipulating thin flexible sheets is difficult with existing grippers. Second, a careful coordination of both hands is required to delicately handle both the project being handled and the packaging material.

The goal of this project is to develop a prototype gripper that uses electrostatic attraction to manipulate objects.

Research engagement

Literature review, fabrication, integration onto a robot arm, testing and demonstration.

Research activities

  1. Study the existing literature on electroadhesive grippers.
  2. Design a prototype gripper that can be integrated to the existing robot arms
  3. Demonstrate the process of picking up a large sheet of paper (e.g. A3).

Research skills

fabrication, 3D prototyping, high voltage electronics, operating robot arms

Outcomes

1. A protoype gripper design
2. Data from experimental characterisation
3. A demonstration of the gripper
4. Stretch goal - wrapping a box in gift paper with the gripper mounted to a robot.

Skills and experience

  1. Familiarity with electronics and programming
  2. Basic prototyping and CAD skills will be handy
  3. An interest to learn something new

Start date

2 November, 2026

End date

19 February, 2027

Location

QUT Centre for Robotics, S block, Gardens Point Campus

Keywords

Contact

Krishna Digumarti

7 3138 2606

krishnamanaswi.digumarti@qut.edu.au