This paper presents an Evolutionary Programming based (EP) solution for the nonlinear frictional gripper problem for both the isotropic and orthotropic cases. The presented method is compared with other methods that involve piecewise linearization of the friction law, and methods that are based on the solution of Nonlinear Complementarity Problem (NCP). The EP method could generate more optimal solutions than those of other methods. Numerical examples that illustrate the proposed method are presented.