Development of multi-functional robot hand for multi-legged robot

In recent years, various robots have been researched and developed. As a part of them, robots working in dangerous place for human beings are attracted attention. The dangerous places include the outdoor irregular ground or the narrow place mainly, so the robots need to have high moving ability. In addition, It also requires high operational ability as same as human. To satisfying these necessities, multi-legged robots are suitable. In this paper, we design a robot hand for visual inspection equipped with three dimensional force sensing. The designed hand is attached to the tip of legs of multi-legged robot. Furthermore evaluation of a prototype is reported. The reason for the robot hand to be equipped to the tip of multi-legged robot is that it could meet following four requirements. Firstly, the hand system can catch a small object such as bolts and wires. Secondly, a small camera is attached inside the hand for visual inspection. Thirdly, the hand is functioned as a leg point of ASTERISK. Lastly, the hand can equip three dimensional force sensing ability. The developed hand is confirmed to meets these four requirements through the experiments.