Development of bio-mimetic robot hand using parallel mechanisms

This paper describes a development of bio-mimetic robot hands and its control scheme. Each robot hand has four under-actuated fingers, which are driven by two linear actuators coupled. According to the study of the human hand, it is noted that coupled muscles (flexor and extensor muscle) generate the finger motion. Each fingertip can reach toward objects by curved surface workspace in 3D-space. The robot hand was designed considering the dexterity and the size suited for human tools and has tactile sensors equipped on the fingertips of each finger. The robot hand has 4 fingers with totally nine DOFs including two linear actuators and linkage knuckles. In the former part of this paper, the design of the robot hand is presented. And in the latter part of the paper, computational simulations are described. The simulations show the performance of the robot hand to manipulate tools of various shapes.