A Linkage-Driven Underactuated Robotic Hand for Adaptive Grasping and In-Hand Manipulation

The development of robotic hand that can imitate human movements has always been an important research topic. In this paper, a linkage-driven underactuated three-finger hand is proposed to imitate the flexion/extension (f/e) and abduction/adduction (a/a) motions of human hand. The robotic hand has three identical underactuated fingers, each of which contains an underactuated planar linkage, a spherical four-bar mechanism, and a set of bevel gears. The spherical four-bar mechanism is designed to provide 2-degree-of-freedom actuation, driving the f/e and a/a motions of the proximal joint simultaneously. Based on screw theory, the kinematic model of the spherical mechanism is established, and the maximum available workspace index (MAW) of the spherical mechanism is proposed to evaluate the workspace with the same adduction and abduction angle ranges. The effects of the parameters of the spherical mechanism on the MAW and the transmission efficiency are obtained, and the parameters of the spherical mechanism are optimized. The optimization results show that the MAW of the spherical mechanism can be increased by up to 3.5 times. Finally, experiments are carried out to show the proposed robotic hand can perform simultaneous adaptive grasping and in-hand manipulation.
Note to Practitioners
—The robotic hand is of great significance for replacing workers in heavy, repetitive, and unsafe working environments. Uncertain environments in non-manufacturing fields, such as industries for pick-and-place, sorting, palletizing, assembly and other operations, marine development, and medical service, require that robotic hands can operate tasks like human hands. Inspired by the human hand with the f/e and a/a motions, a linkage-driven underactuated three-finger hand is proposed in this paper to imitate the functions of the human hand. Due to its underactuated characteristics and a/a function, the designed robotic hand is more dexterous and economical. The effects of the design parameters of the spherical mechanism on the MAW and the transmission efficiency are analyzed, and the parameters of the spherical mechanism are optimized to improve the performance of the robotic hand. This approach can be used in other industrial applications related to the robotic hand or the spherical mechanism.