A Compliant, Underactuated Hand for Robust Manipulation

TL;DR

This paper presents the i-HY Hand, a durable, inexpensive, underactuated robotic hand with 5 actuators, optimized for versatile grasping and manipulation tasks, emphasizing its minimalistic design and passive mechanics.

Contribution

The paper introduces the novel minimalistic design of the i-HY Hand, optimized for diverse grasping tasks using passive finger mechanics and underactuation.

Findings

Successful grasping of various objects

Stable fingertip grasping demonstrated

Ability to modulate grasp force passively

Abstract

This paper introduces the i-HY Hand, an underactuated hand driven by 5 actuators that is capable of performing a wide range of grasping and in-hand manipulation tasks. This hand was designed to address the need for a durable, inexpensive, moderately dexterous hand suitable for use on mobile robots. The primary focus of this paper will be on the novel minimalistic design of i-HY, which was developed by choosing a set of target tasks around which the design of the hand was optimized. Particular emphasis is placed on the development of underactuated fingers that are capable of both firm power grasps and low- stiffness fingertip grasps using only the passive mechanics of the finger mechanism. Experimental results demonstrate successful grasping of a wide range of target objects, the stability of fingertip grasping, as well as the ability to adjust the force exerted on grasped objects using the passive finger mechanics.