Design and control of a robot with two fingers

The design, construction, integration, control and experimental tests for a two-finger robot hand driven by pneumatic muscles is presented. Each finger has four degrees of freedom (DOF) and is actuated with eight muscles working in antagonism (16 muscles in total). For control purposes discrete-time PID controllers are synthesized to control the angular positions for each finger, which are then embedded into a Digital Signal Controller (DSC). Several experimental tests show the good operation of the robot hand.