Directly 3D Printed, Pneumatically Actuated Multi-Material Robotic Hand

TL;DR

This paper introduces a cost-effective, directly 3D printed multi-material robotic hand with 15 degrees of freedom, combining soft and rigid components, and demonstrates its use in teleoperation tasks.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel design of a multi-material, directly 3D printed robotic hand with pneumatic actuators, eliminating assembly and reducing manufacturing costs.

Findings

Hand can be manufactured for less than $300

Successfully tested in teleoperation tasks

Uses multi-material additive manufacturing for integration

Abstract

Soft robotic manipulators with many degrees of freedom can carry out complex tasks safely around humans. However, manufacturing of soft robotic hands with several degrees of freedom requires a complex multi-step manual process, which significantly increases their cost. We present a design of a multi-material 15 DoF robotic hand with five fingers including an opposable thumb. Our design has 15 pneumatic actuators based on a series of hollow chambers that are driven by an external pressure system. The thumb utilizes rigid joints and the palm features internal rigid structure and soft skin. The design can be directly 3D printed using a multi-material additive manufacturing process without any assembly process and therefore our hand can be manufactured for less than 300 dollars. We test the hand in conjunction with a low-cost vision-based teleoperation system on different tasks.