UTHM HAND: Performance of Complete System of Dexterous Anthropomorphic Robotic Hand

Abstract

This paper describes a new robotic hand system working under master slave configuration. The slave robotic hand is tele-operated by a master glove that a human operator can wear. The wireless tele-operation is being done by using Bluetooth as the communication channel between master and slave. The angle information of the operator's hand is transferred via this Bluetooth channel by embedding BendSensors in the glove. BendSensors act like a potentiometer strip and detects the movement of every joint present in the hand. The slave robotic hand, on reception of this angle information mimics the movement of human operator. The UTHM robotic hand is a multi fingered dexterous anthropomorphic hand. The hand comprises of five fingers (four fingers and one thumb), each having four degrees of freedom (DOF), which can perform flexion, extension, abduction, adduction and also circumduction. For the actuation purpose, pneumatic muscles and springs are used. The paper exemplifies the design for the robotic hand and provides the torque modelling and torque produced at each finger joint of the robotic hand. It also discusses different robotic hands that have been developed before date.