The paper addresses a problem of “in-hand” locating parts of different shapes in robotic grasping. The goal of the process is to locate a part of an arbitrary shape from an imprecisely determined initial position within a gripper to a final prescribed one. Two possible approaches to solve the problem are considered: non-adaptive, using ordinary rigid jaws of gripper and, adaptive, using an adaptive jaw which improves the performance of the locating process. The latter approach is proposed to be solved by a new type of grasping mechanism. Its theoretical analysis enables to obtain formal conditions for part behavior during the successive steps of the locating process. This process was simulated and then experimentally investigated on an actual gripper model. The proposed new class of mechanisms opens a promising avenue to the creation of a practical class of universal robotic grippers for industry.