Design and performance assessment of an underactuated hand for industrial applications

The Delft Hand 2 (DH-2) is an underactuated robot hand meant for industrial applications, having six degrees of freedom (DoF), one actuator (DoA) and no sensors. It was designed to provide a cheap and robust hand to grasp a large range of objects without damaging them. The goal of this paper is to assess the design and performance of the DH-2, demonstrating how the design was optimized for its intended application area and how the hand was simplified to make it commercially attractive. Performance tests show that the DH-2 has a payload of 2 kg for an object range of 60 to 120 mm, it can close or open within 0.5 s, and it only uses open-loop control by means of the input voltage of the motor. The results demonstrate that the industrial need of a simple, cheap and effective robotic hand can be achieved with the principle of underactuation and the use of conventional components.