On the design of a full-actuated robot hand with target sensing self-adaption and slider crank mechanism

Abstract

The robot hand is one of the most important subsystems of an industrial system, it can interact with the environment directly and are often required to deal with objects with different positions, sizes, and shapes. To meet these requirements, many self-adaptive hands have been developed. However, the traditional finger cannot perform a linear translation of its distal phalanx. The linear translation of the distal phalanx is useful in grasping thin objects on a flat surface without additional motion of manipulators. This paper designs a novel linear-parallel and sensing self-adaptive robot hand (LPSS hand) and its corresponding control system, the hand combines the self-adaptive grasping mode and linear-parallel pinching mode, and it can switch among different grasping modes according to signals provided by the sensors. The hand consists of 3 fingers, 6 sensors, and one palm. Each finger includes 2 actuators, 2 phalanxes, and 2 DOF (degree of freedom). The hand was designed based on a novel straight-line mechanism, kinematics and force analysis of the hand are conducted to give more detail properties of the design and provide some method for optimization. The hand has much application potential in the industrial field.