WARABI Hand: Five-Fingered Robotic Hand with Flexible Skin and Force Sensors for Social Interaction

A robotic hand for social interaction should be capable of comfortable touch with humans. However, it is difficult to mount skin, tactile sensors, and driving mechanism required for human contact, especially holding hands, on a slender finger. In addition, in order to unitize the hand for easy use with any robot and maintainability, the mechanism must be contained within the small space of the fingers and palms. In this paper, we propose a human-sized five-fingered robotic hand named WARABI Hand. It is covered with multi-layored rubber skin to realize human-like soft and pleasant feel. Force sensors on each finger link detect contact with humans and adjust gripping force. We conducted experiments in which a humanoid equipped with WARABI Hand grasped forearm, held hands, and interlocked fingers with a person. The performance for object grasping was also evaluated. We demonstrated that our proposed hand is useful for interaction with humans including receiving and handing over things.