Multimodal Quad‐Finger Soft Robotic Hand With Dual‐Chamber Origami Actuator for Large‐Workspace Manipulation

Increasing demands for multimodal manipulation and large‐workspace operation in complex environments are driving interest in compliant, safe, morphologically adaptable soft robotic hands for humanoid robotics. This article presents a multimodal quad‐finger soft robotic hand, termed the QDO hand, in which each finger is actuated by a dual‐chamber straight–curved origami prismatic (SCOP) actuator. By regulating positive and negative pressures in the dual chambers, each finger achieves multiple motion modalities with a large range of motion, including axial extension–contraction and bidirectional bending. Based on these capabilities, a Dual‐Chamber‐Induced Finger‐Level Multimodal Gesture (DCI‐FLMG) scheme is proposed to coordinate modalities across fingers and generate diverse hand‐level gestures, including anthropomorphic in‐hand gestures (AIHGs), dorsal bending gestures (DBGs), and axial extension–contraction gestures (AECGs). A kinematic model of the QDO hand is established and compared with a constrained human grasping motion (CHGM) hand that excludes finger abduction–adduction. Results show that the QDO hand achieves a total workspace approximately 5.2 times that of the CHGM hand while covering about 70% of its reachable area. Demonstrations validate AIHGs, DBGs, and AECGs in representative scenarios involving manipulation, posture transitions, and human–robot collaboration, highlighting their potential for dexterous manipulation in complex, unstructured, narrow‐space environments.