The Modular Multisensory DLR-HIT-Hand: Hardware and Software Architecture

This paper presents hardware and software architecture of the newly developed compact multisensory German aerospace research (DLR)-Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT)-Hand. The hand has four identical fingers and an extra degree of freedom for the palm. In each finger, there is a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) for data collection, brushless dc motors for control, and communication is accomplished with palm's FPGA by point-to-point serial communication (PPSeCo). The kernel of the hardware system is a peripheral component interconnect (PCI)- based high-speed floating-point DSP for data processing, and FPGA for high-speed (up to 25 Mb/s) real-time serial communication with the palm's FPGA. In order to achieve high modularity and reliability of the hand, a fully mechatronic integration and analog signals in situ digitalization philosophy is implemented to minimize the dimension and number of the cables (five cables including power supply), and protect data communication from outside disturbances. Furthermore, according to the hardware structure of the hand, a hierarchical software structure has been established to perform all data processing and the control of the hand. It provides basic air position indicator (API) functions and skills to access all hardware resources for data acquisition, computation, and teleoperation. With the nice design of the hand's envelop, the hand looks more like a humanoid.