Fast, strong and compliant pneumatic actuation for dexterous tendon-driven hands

We describe a pneumatic actuation system for dexterous robotic hands. It was motivated by our desire to improve the ShadowHand system, yet it is quite universal and indeed we are already using it with a second robotic hand we have developed. Our actuation system allows us to move the ShadowHand skeleton faster than a human hand (70 msec limit-to-limit movement, 30 msec overall reflex latency), generate sufficient forces (40 N at each finger tendon, 125N at each wrist tendon), and achieve high compliance on the mechanism level (6 grams of external force at the fingertip displaces the finger when the system is powered.) This combination of speed, force and compliance is a prerequisite for dexterous manipulation, yet it has never before been achieved with a tendon-driven system, let alone a system with 24 degrees of freedom and 40 tendons.