Development of a high-speed multifingered hand system and its application to catching

In this paper we introduce a newly developed high-speed multi-fingered robotic hand. The hand has 8-joints and 3-fingers. A newly developed small harmonic drive gear and a high-power mini actuator are fitted in each finger link, and a strain gauge sensor is in each joint. The weight of the hand module is only 0.8 kg, but high-speed motion and high-power grasping are possible. The hand can close its joints at 180 deg per 0.1 s, and the fingertips have an output force of about 28 N. The hand system is controlled by a massively parallel vision system. Experimental results are shown in which a falling object was caught by the high-speed hand.