R. Raymond

About

R. Raymond is a prominent robotics researcher whose work has fundamentally shaped the field of robotic grasping and dexterous manipulation. Operating at the intersection of mechanical design, underactuated systems, and fabrication technology, Raymond has made sustained contributions to making capable robotic hands more accessible, affordable, and effective. Raymond's most celebrated work introduced the iRobot-Harvard-Yale (iHY) Hand, a compliant underactuated design that demonstrated how relatively simple actuation could achieve surprisingly versatile grasping — a paper that has accumulated nearly 600 citations. Complementing this, the Yale OpenHand Project and an open-source 3D printed hand design (254 citations) democratized robotic hand research by lowering cost and fabrication barriers for the broader community. Beyond hardware, Raymond has made important theoretical contributions, developing taxonomies and frameworks for understanding dexterity across human and robotic domains, with foundational papers on manipulation classification and the nature of dexterity together drawing over 350 citations. Additional work on hybrid deposition manufacturing expanded the toolkit available for creating multimaterial robotic mechanisms. With over 1,500 total citations across these ten papers alone, Raymond's research has profoundly influenced how roboticists design, fabricate, and reason about robotic hands and manipulation systems.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   A compliant, underactuated hand for robust manipulation

   597 citations · 2014
2. 2
   A modular, open-source 3D printed underactuated hand

   254 citations · 2013
3. 3
   A Hand-Centric Classification of Human and Robot Dexterous Manipulation

   197 citations · 2012
4. 4
   Yale OpenHand Project: Optimizing Open-Source Hand Designs for Ease of Fabrication and Adoption

   164 citations · 2017
5. 5
   On dexterity and dexterous manipulation

   156 citations · 2011
6. 6
   The GR2 Gripper: An Underactuated Hand for Open-Loop In-Hand Planar Manipulation

   119 citations · 2016
7. 7
   Hybrid Deposition Manufacturing: Design Strategies for Multimaterial Mechanisms Via Three-Dimensional Printing and Material Deposition

   92 citations · 2014
8. 8
   Precision grasping and manipulation of small objects from flat surfaces using underactuated fingers

   61 citations · 2012
9. 9
   M2 Gripper: Extending the Dexterity of a Simple, Underactuated Gripper

   60 citations · 2015
10. 10
    Linkage-Based Analysis and Optimization of an Underactuated Planar Manipulator for In-Hand Manipulation

    45 citations · 2013

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links