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The aim of the paper is to lay the basis for the development of an expert system for the selection of robot grippers. The work started with a review of the literature concerning (i) grasping principles, (ii) releasing strategies and (iii) main problems concerning the automatic assembly and, more in general, the handling. Actually, the choice of a gripper cannot be done only relying on the object characteristics: indeed, many other parameters as feeding conditions, handling characteristics, positioning and releasing conditions deeply affect the right choice. \nFirst the paper defines a set of parameters that will be the input of the method. A precious, but not exhaustive, source of information is the past work on Design For Assembly (DFA) where parameters, rules and warnings were defined and can be reused for the new purpose. \nThen a set of rules have been created to guide the user in the choice of the most suitable grasping principle. The analysis of the literature on grippers allowed the research group to develop a wide DB of examples both coming from industry and academia. \nOnce a suitable grasping strategy is chosen, this grasping principle has to prove of being compatible with the releasing phase. Therefore a compatibility matrix between component characteristics and grasping-releasing principles has been proposed and developed. The work ends with a series of tests among which a case study describing a selection of a suitable gripper for food industry is shown.