The Folding Hand: Anthropomorphic Robotic Hands with a Compact Reconfigurable Humanoid Palm Design
Qiujie Lu, Jiehan Zou, Zhongxue Gan
AI summary
Problem
Existing anthropomorphic robotic hands are either too complex and expensive or lack the adaptive palm reconfiguration needed for human-like dexterity and precision.
Approach
The authors designed a compact, tendon-driven hand with a single-servo folding palm and passive rotating finger bases that mimic human metacarpophalangeal joints for coupled abduction/adduction and adaptive grasping.
Key results
- Anthropomorphic palm abduction/adduction and compliant finger rotation with six actuators
- Object-independent grasp workspace generation combining coverage and quality metrics
- Significant expansion of graspable workspace coverage and stability via folding palm
- Precise in-hand manipulation and versatile adaptive grasping validation
Why it matters
Provides a mechanically simple, low-cost blueprint for dexterous robotic hands that can bridge the gap between biological hand functionality and practical robotic manipulation.
Abstract
The human palm is a remarkable and highly functional part of the hand that significantly contributes to dexterity, grasp versatility, and overall manipulation capability. The metacarpophalangeal joints (MCP) of the palm facilitate movement of the fingers for flexion, extension, abduction, ad- duction, and limited circumduction, which can be a challenge to replicate the same function in robotic hands by simple design. In this paper, we proposed a single actuated folding mechanism as the metacarpals and passive rotating MCP joints to perform abduction, adduction, and circumduction of the human hand. The proposed anthropomorphic hand called Folding Hand which has a reconfigurable palm and five underactuated tendon-driven fingers. The design of the hand is compact and the price is low, with all six actuators and five sensors on the hand costing less than $180. Additionally, a methodology has been developed to comprehensively analyze the grasping capacity by combining the grasping quality and the grasping workspace. The experimental results show that the folding palm mechanism and the compliant rotating finger base can replicate human hand capabilities and performance precision and in-hand manipulation tasks.