Mechatronics Design of Multi-Finger Robot Hand

The author reports the development of a multi-finger robot hand with the mechatronics approach. The proposed robot hand has 4 fingers with 14 under-actuated joints driven by 10 linear actuators with linkages. Each of the 10 nodes in the distributed control system uses position and current feedback to monitor the contact stiffness and control the grasping force according to the motor current change rate. The combined force and position control loop enable the robot hand to grasp an object with the unknown shape. Pre-defined tasks, such as grasping and pinching are stored as scripts in the hand controller to provide a high-level programming interface for the upstream robot controller. The mechanical design, controller design and co-simulation are performed in an integrated model-based software environment, and also for the real time code generation and for mechanical parts manufacturing with a 3D printer. Based on the same model for design, a virtual robot hand interface is developed to provide off-line simulation tool and user interface to the robot hand to reduce the programming effort in fingers' motion planning. In the development of the robot hand, the mechatronics approach has been proven to be an indispensable tool for such a complex system.