Study on the hands of table tennis robot

Abstract

The hands of the table tennis robot existing in the Institute of Robotics of Swiss Federal Institute of Technology(ETH), the championship of Hong Kong First Contest for table tennis Robot in 1992, is made up of two rotational joints about horizontal and vertical axes for orienting the paddle and one prismatic joint for paddle movement. The trajectory of the prismatic is a straight line and the balls is curve, which affects the performance of the robot in the game. Some different mechanical designs as alternatives for the hands to improve the flexibility and performance of the robot is presented in this paper.The kinematic and dynamic characteristics is also studied and some detailed structure features is shown.