A Modular Bio-inspired Robotic Hand with High Sensitivity

TL;DR

This paper introduces a modular, bio-inspired robotic hand that combines soft and rigid components, offering high sensitivity and dexterity for various grasping tasks, with a focus on low-cost, efficient fabrication.

Contribution

It presents a novel hybrid design integrating soft and rigid parts with embedded sensing, enabling high sensitivity and modularity for versatile manipulation.

Findings

Successfully performs human grasp types

Low-cost, rapid fabrication process

High sensitivity pose estimation

Abstract

While parallel grippers and multi-fingered robotic hands are well developed and commonly used in structured settings, it remains a challenge in robotics to design a highly articulated robotic hand that can be comparable to human hands to handle various daily manipulation and grasping tasks. Dexterity usually requires more actuators but also leads to a more sophisticated mechanism design and is more expensive to fabricate and maintain. Soft materials are able to provide compliance and safety when interacting with the physical world but are hard to model. This work presents a hybrid bio-inspired robotic hand that combines soft matters and rigid elements. Sensing is integrated into the rigid bodies resulting in a simple way for pose estimation with high sensitivity. The proposed hand is in a modular structure allowing for rapid fabrication and programming. The fabrication process is carefully designed so that a full hand can be made with low-cost materials and assembled in an efficient manner. We demonstrate the dexterity of the hand by successfully performing human grasp types.