CATCH-919 Hand: Design of a 9-actuator 19-DOF Anthropomorphic Robotic Hand
This work addresses the problem of reducing actuator count while maintaining flexibility for robotic hand applications, representing an incremental improvement in anthropomorphic robotics.
The paper tackled the challenge of achieving human-like dexterity in robotic hands by proposing a new design based on biomechanical insights, resulting in a 9-actuator hand that can realize 33 static and stable grasping postures.
To achieve human-like dexterity for anthropomorphic robotic hands, it is essential to understand the biomechanics and control strategies of the human hand, in order to reduce the number of actuators being used without loosing hand flexibility. To this end, in this article, we propose a new interpretation about the working mechanism of the metacarpal (MCP) joint's extension and the underlying control strategies of the human hand, based on which we further propose a highly flexible finger design to achieve independent movements of interphalangeal (IP) joints and MCP joint. Besides, we consider the hyperextension of fingertip into our design which helps robotic finger present compliant and adaptive posture for touching and pinching. In addition, human thumb muscle functions are reconstructed in the proposed robotic hand design, by replacing 9 human muscle tendons with 3 cables in the proposed task-oriented design, realizing all 33 static and stable grasping postures. Videos are available at https://sites.google.com/view/szwd