Dexterous anthropomorphic robot hand with distributed tactile sensor: Gifu hand II

Abstract

Presents an anthropomorphic robot hand called Gifu hand II that is a revised version of the Gifu hand I. The Gifu hand II has five fingers in which all joints are driven by servomotors built in the fingers and the palm. The thumb has 4 joints with 4 degrees of freedom (DOF), the other fingers have 4 joints with 3 DOF respectively, and two axes of joints near the palm cross orthogonally at one point like the human finger. It can be equipped with a 6 axes force sensor at each fingertip and a developed distributed tactile sensor with 624 detecting points on its surface. The design concepts and the specifications of the Gifu hand II, the basic characteristics of the tactile sensor, and the pressure distributions at object grasping are shown. These show that the Gifu hand II has a high potential to perform dexterous object manipulation like a human hand.