An anthropomorphic robotic end effector

Abstract

Research into the developmental of artificial mechanical hands for prosthetic applications has been conducted over many hundreds of years. Dexterous mechanical hands are now being applied to advanced robotic applications, including tele-operated manipulators. The successful application of dexterous mechanical hands depends on the development of suitable mechanisms, actuators and control strategies. Recently the requirement arose for a manipulator to fit and operate within a standard glove box glove. The design and development of a fully anthropomorphic dexterous end effector for the manipulator is discussed in this paper. To arrive at the final design a study of the operation of the human hand was undertaken. The end effector consists of four mechanically adaptive fingers and a thumb. The mechanism developed for the fingers will simulate the curl of the human finger. The complete finger mechanism requires only a single actuator to produce fully the required motion, leading to a compact design for the end effector. To gain the full operational advantage of the dexterous hand a control strategy has been developed based on global sensing and a hierarchical control structure. The results of handling trials are presented.