Anthropomorphic Robot Hand with Distributed Tactile Sensor Aiming at Platform of Robotics Researchs.

Abstract

This paper presents an anthropomorphic robot hand called Gifu Hand II to be used as a platform of robot hand for robotics rearches. The Gifu Hand II has 5 fingers driven by servomotors built in hand. The thumb has 4 joints with 4 degrees of freedom (DOF), the other fingers have 4 joints with 3 DOF, and two axes of joints near the palm cross orthogonally at one point like the human finger. It can equip 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 and the basic characteristics of the hand with force sensor and tactile sensor are shown. These show that the Gifu Hand II has a high potential to perform the dexterous object manipulation like the human hand.