The Development of Multifingered Robot

Elaborate research has been done on the development of multifingered robot hand, which is employed as prosthetic hand or in humanoid robots for the past two decades. Power grasping and precision grasping are two areas in which the former relates to the application of robots carrying heavy loads. Many models and algorithms have been developed for manipulating objects with multifingered robot hand. In the current years, research is focused towards the manipulation in which the robot fingers are made from soft material. Identification of suitable soft material as substitute for the human skin is a tedious and the deformation effect of soft finger and/or object is common issue in the development of such robot hand.

The development of soft fingers is related fundamental area in the soft manipulations. Related to the modeling of a soft hand Xydas. Developed a contact model and studied soft finger tip contact mechanics using FEM and validated the results by experiments. Byoung-Ho Kim analyzed the fundamental deformation effect of soft finger tip in two fingered object manipulation.

Takahiro Inoue focused on formulating elastic force and potential energy equation for the deformation of fingers which are represented as an infinite number of virtual spring s standing vertically. Elaborate research has been done on soft finger tip manipulations but only a few attempts have been made on power grasping. Analytical model for force distribution in power grasps has been developed by Mirza. Developed a method calculating additional grasping force required for stable power grasping of objects.

A simple contact model as applied to power grasping has been developed and force deformation relationship has been formulated. The geometrical relationship between deformation and contact width is first proposed. The total contact which is based on the contract which is based on the contact parameters, material property, and geometrical data and material property is found by using the compressional strain mechanism.