Research of passive grasp multi-fingered robot hand

Abstract

This paper presents a robot hand, PG Hand, which is able to perform many operations with passive grasp. The PG Hand is designed by imitating the human hand, and can either be used as one part of robots or the handicapped. All fingers in the hand are similar in their grasping principle. Each finger has two or three joints with a tendon-spring mechanism. All joints in the hand are actuated by only one motor embedded into the palm. There is an incomplete gear in the middle of the transmission path. There are three stages: fingers are bent initially due to springs; fingers are opened by the motor before grasping; fingers grasp quickly once none tooth part in the incomplete gear is actuated into transmission path. Bearing the characteristics of under-actuation and self-adaption, the device can open and close fingers efficiently and robustly with tendon-spring mechanisms by only one motor. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.