Abstract
: In recent years numerous robot systems
with multifingered grippers or hands have been
developed all around the world. Many different
approaches have been taken, anthropomorphic and
non-anthropomorphic ones. Not only the
mechanical structure of such systems was
investigated, but also the necessary control system.
With the human hand as an exemplar, such robot
systems use their hands to grasp diverse objects
without the need to change the gripper. The special
kinematic abilities of such a robot hand, like small
masses and inertia, make even complex
manipulations and very fine manipulations of a
grasped object within the own workspace of the
hand possible. Such complex manipulations are for
example regrasping operations needed for the
rotation of a grasped object around arbitrary
angles and axis without depositing the object and
picking it up again. In this paper an overview on
the design of such robot hands in general is given,
as well as a presentation of an example of such a
robot hand, the Karlsruhe Dexterous Hand II. The
paper then ends with the presentation of some new
ideas which will be used to build an entire new
robot hand for a humanoid robot using fluidic
actuators.
Keywords: Multifingered gripper, robot hand, fine
manipulation, mechanical system, control system