A control system for multi-fingered robotic hand with distributed touch sensor

Abstract

A robotic hand and its control system is developed. This hand has five fingers and 22 DOF. (16 for fingers and 6 for arm). The surface of the hand is covered with a distributed touch sensor that has more than 500 measuring points. This system, can control the positon, orientation, velocity and force of multiple points on the hand simultaneously. The effectiveness of this system is shown by the experiment in which the robotic hand holds a pair of scissors and achieves a paper cutting task. The event driven task execution system is also developed and used for the experiment. This system, watches the event which signals the change of the constrained state of the hand and switches the control points and their behaviors on the hand dynamically according to the detected event.