• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
• /
• v.6 no.3
• /
• pp.220-229
• /
• 2011

This paper focuses on a development of an anthropomorphic robot hand. Human hand is able to dexterously grasp and manipulate various objects with not accurate and sufficient, but inaccurate and scarce information of target objects. In order to realize the ability of human hand, we develop a robot hand and introduce a control scheme for stable grasping by using only kinematic information. The developed anthropomorphic robot hand, KITECH Hand, has one thumb and three fingers. Each of them has 4 DOF and a soft hemispherical finger tip for flexible opposition and rolling on object surfaces. In addition to a thumb and finger, it has a palm module composed the non-slip pad to prevent slip phenomena between the object and palm. The introduced control scheme is a quitely simple based on the principle of virtual work, which consists of transposed Jacobian, joint angular position, and velocity obtained by joint angle measurements. During interaction between the robot hand and an object, the developed robot hand shows compliant grasping motions by the back-drivable characteristics of equipped actuator modules. To validate the feasibility of the developed robot hand and introduced control scheme, collective experiments are carried out with the developed robot hand, KITECH Hand.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.230-238
• /
• 2003

In this paper, a three-fingered anthropomorphic robot hand, called SKK Robot Hand 1, is presented. By employing a two-DOF joint mechanism, called Double Active Universal Joint (abbreviated as DAUJ from now on) as its metacarpal joint, the hand makes it possible to mimic humanlike motions. We begin with addressing the motivation of the design and mention how the anthropomorphic feature of a human is realized in the design of SKK Hand I Also, the mechanism of the hand is explained in detail, and advantages in its modular design are discussed. The proposed hand is developed for use as a testbed for dextrous manipulation. It is expected to resolve the increasing demand for robotic applications in unstructured environments. We describe its hardware construction as well as the controller structure including the preliminary results of experiments.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.20 no.9
• /
• pp.964-970
• /
• 2014

In this study we have developed an anthropomorphic robot hand and arm by using tendon-tubes which can be used for people's everyday life as a robot's dynamic power transmission device. Most previous robot hands or arms had critical problem on dynamic optimization due to heavy weight of power transmission parts which placed on robot's finger area or arm area. In order to resolve this problem we designed light-weighted robot hand and arm by using tendon-tubes which were consisted of many articulations and links just like human's hand and arm. The most prominent property of this robot hand and arm is reduction of the weight of robot's power transmission part. Reduction of weight of robot's power transmission parts will allow us to develop energy saving and past moving robot hands and arms which can be used for artificial arms. As a first step for real development in this study we showed structural design and demonstration of simulation of possibility of a robot hand and arm by tendon-tube. In the future research we are planning to verify practicality of the robot hand and arm by applying sensing and controlling method to a specimen.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.30 no.4 s.247
• /
• pp.357-363
• /
• 2006

According to the study of grasping of the human hand, it is noted that the metacarpal link of the thumb plays the key role in power grasping. Also the face of fingertip can be discriminated into five parts depending on the grasping modalities such as pinch grasp, fingertip grasp and power grasp. In this paper, the design of the anthropomorphic robot hand which has a thumb and three fingers is proposed. A difference of SKKU hand II from the previous gripperlike robot hand is that the metacarpal bone is connected between the thumb and the palm. This thumb mechanism is specially designed to get the degree of freedom which can realize flexible motions relative to objects. Based on the analysis, the hand mechanism is developed. Since the driving circuits for the hand are embedded in the hand, only the communication lines supporting CAN protocol with DC power cable are necessary as the input. A new robot is manufactured and feasibility of the hand is validated through preliminary experiments.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.12 no.6
• /
• pp.594-599
• /
• 2006

In this paper an anthropomorphic robot hand called SKKU Hand IIl is presented, which has a miniaturized fingertip tactile sensor. The thumb is designed as one part of the palm and multiplies the mobility of the palm. The fingertip tactile sensor, based on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and pressure variable resistor ink, is physically flexible enough to be deformed into any three-dimensional geometry. In order to detect incipient slip, a PVDF strip is arranged along the direction normal to the surface of the finger of the robot hand. Also, a thin flexible sensor to sense the static force as well as the contact location is fabricated into an arrayed type using pressure variable resistor ink. The driving circuits and the tactile sensing systems for the SKKU Hand II are embedded in the hand. Each driving circuit communicates with others using CAN protocol. SKKU Hand II is manufactured and its feasibility is validated through preliminary experiments.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
• /
• v.5 no.2
• /
• pp.102-109
• /
• 2010

In this study, an anthropomorphic robot Hand, called "SKKU Hand III" is presented. The hand has thirteen DOF(Degree-Of-Freedom) and is designed based on the skeletal structure of the human hand. Each finger module(except thumb module) has three DOF and four joints with a saddle joint mechanism which has two DOF at the base joint. Two distal joints of the finger module are mechanically coupled by a timing belt and pulleys. The thumb module is composed of a finger module and an additional actuator, which makes it possible to realize the opposition between the thumb and the other fingers. In addition, the palm DOF of the human hand is mimicked with a spatial link mechanism between the index finger and the thumb. Thus, it can grasp objects more stably and more strongly. For the modularization of the robotic hand all the driving circuits are embedded in the hand, and only the communication lines supporting CAN protocol with DC power cable are given as an interface. Therefore, it is possible to apply it to any robot system the interface. To validate the feasibility of the SKKU Hand III, a series of the representative grasp experiments such as power, precision, intermediate grasp etc. are carried out with the object around us and its operation is demonstrated.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2003.10a
• /
• pp.2022-2026
• /
• 2003

We define that the end effector is the device which interact environment or objects with contact to execute tasks. Up to now, many researchers developed anthropomorphic robotic hands as end effectors. In this paper, we will discuss a problem on the development of a human-scale and motor-driven anthropomorphic robot hand. In this paper, design concept, actuator and transmission, kinematic design and sensing device are presented. By imitating the physiology of human hands, we devised new metacarpalphalangeal joint and interphalangeal joint suitable for human-size robot hands

• ETRI Journal
• /
• v.38 no.6
• /
• pp.1218-1228
• /
• 2016

This paper proposes a robot hand for a violin-playing robot and introduces a newly developed robot finger. The proposed robot hand acts as the left hand of the violin-playing robot system. The violin fingering plays an important role in determining the tone or sound when the violin is being played. Among the diverse types of violin fingering playing, it is not possible to produce vibrato with simple position control. Therefore, we newly designed a three-axis load cell for force control, which is mounted at the end of the robot finger. Noise is calculated through an analysis of the resistance difference across the strain gauge attached to the proposed three-axis load cell. In order to ensure the stability of the three-axis load cell by analyzing the stress distribution, the strain generated in the load cell is also verified through a finite element analysis. A sound rating quality system previously developed by the authors is used to compare and analyze the sound quality of the fourth-octave C-note played by a human violinist and the proposed robot finger.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
• /
• v.10 no.5
• /
• pp.179-186
• /
• 2021

Manipulation of complex objects with an anthropomorphic robot hand like a human hand is a challenge in the human-centric environment. In order to train the anthropomorphic robot hand which has a high degree of freedom (DoF), human demonstration augmented deep reinforcement learning policy optimization methods have been proposed. In this work, we first demonstrate augmentation of human demonstration in deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is effective for object manipulation by comparing the performance of the augmentation-free Natural Policy Gradient (NPG) and Demonstration Augmented NPG (DA-NPG). Then three DRL policy optimization methods, namely NPG, Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO), and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), have been evaluated with DA (i.e., DA-NPG, DA-TRPO, and DA-PPO) and without DA by manipulating six objects such as apple, banana, bottle, light bulb, camera, and hammer. The results show that DA-NPG achieved the average success rate of 99.33% whereas NPG only achieved 60%. In addition, DA-NPG succeeded grasping all six objects while DA-TRPO and DA-PPO failed to grasp some objects and showed unstable performances.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.62-69
• /
• 2008

A specialized anthropomorphic robot hand which can be attached to the biped humanoid robot MAHRU-R in KIST, has been developed. This built-in type hand consists of three fingers and a thumb with total four DOF(Degrees of Freedom) where the finger mechanism is well designed for grasping typical objects stably in human's daily activities such as sphere and cylinder shaped objects. The restriction of possible motions and the limitation of grasping objects arising from the reduction of DOF can be overcome by reflecting a typical human finger's motion profile to the design procedure. As a result, the developed hand can imitate not only human hand's shape but also its motion in a compact and efficient manner. Also this novel robot hand can perform various human hand gestures naturally and grasp normal objects with both power and precision grasping capability.