doi:10.1080/15397734.2024.2353326engBianchi, EdoardoJorg, Oliver JonasFantoni, GualtieroBrosed Dueso, Francisco JavierYagüe-Fabra, José A.Design and development of a not actively driven modular device for parts feeding and sortingART-2024-138984The current paper focuses on developing and designing a not actively driven module for material handling operations in the field of intra-logistic. This device, belonging to the class of systems known as smart surfaces, is planned to be assembled with others to create manipulative arrays. As a novel feature, the reported concept aims to generate the frictional forces required for surface operation avoiding motors and with a simplified design. The article not only presents the design of the concept, but also the analytic models used to describe its operation and handling forces. In addition, a characterization of the fundamental parameters and the validation of the mentioned analytic descriptions together with the functioning itself are reported. As result, the analysis and the measurements presented show a real solution for a not actively driven concept, along with a methodology to characterize it and predict its handling capabilities. Specifically, the validation test proved that the model is able to represent the behavior of the friction forces with relative errors mainly in the range of 10% or lower.2024http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/13596310.1080/15397734.2024.2353326http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/135963oai:zaguan.unizar.es:135963info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/814225/EU/DIGItal MANufacturing Technologies for Zero-defect Industry 4.0 Production/DIGIMAN4.0This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No H2020 814225-DIGIMAN4.0MECHANICS BASED DESIGN OF STRUCTURES AND MACHINES 52, 12 (2024), 10124-10147by-nchttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.esinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess