Design of a Flexible Articulated Robotic Hand for a Humanoid Robot

It is often desirable for humanoid robots to have dexterous hands and perform human-like grasps. This requires a deliberate design of hands, in addition to a good actuation system and an efficient 3D vision system. In this paper, we present a simple method to produce a customized articulated robotic hand for a humanoid robot (eg., Nadine social robot). Our method acquires the 3D shape by 3D scanning, which can cost-effectively generate customized hands. Guided by the human hand anatomy and inspired by the progress of 3D printing technology, we model the structure of the robotic hand using standard shapes such as cuboids, spheres and cylinders, which are adapted to match the scanned shape and fabricated using 3D printing. Moreover, we choose flexible resin materials(1), which are supported by 3D printers, to make the fabricated hand flexible enough for natural deformation. As a result, our designed robotic hand has six degrees of freedom and together with a cable-driven actuation system can achieve the range of motion as a human hand. Experimental results demonstrated that our robotic hand is capable of grasping a variety of objects with different shapes.