Development of Human Mimetic Hand Aiming to Achieve both “Active Touch” Functions and “Passive Touch” Reproducibility

Abstract

If robots can reproduce human-to-human physical contact which people feel happy, we expect an effective reduction of stress by robots. For reproducing physical contact, we aimed to achieve both the “active touch” function (shaking hands) and the “passive touch” reproducibility. We devised a mechanism and a production procedure to reproduce the “passive touch” such as fleshiness, pliability, and nail and made a prototype. We introduced an elastic material for maintaining force against external force to the wire-driven joint; we think this elasticity is necessary for “passive touch” reproducibility. By trying the actuation of the prototype and verifying the feeling with touch in the participant experiment, we confirmed the validity of the trial artificial hand.