학술논문

The Hydra Hand: A Mode-Switching Underactuated Gripper With Precision and Power Grasping Modes
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. Robotics and Automation Letters, IEEE. 8(11):7599-7606 Nov, 2023
Subject
Robotics and Control Systems
Computing and Processing
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Grasping
Grippers
Thumb
Robot sensing systems
Complexity theory
Actuators
Tendons
multifingered hands
mechanism design
Language
ISSN
2377-3766
2377-3774
Abstract
Human hands are able to grasp a wide range of object sizes, shapes, and weights, achieved via reshaping and altering their apparent grasping stiffness between compliant power and rigid precision. Achieving similar versatility in robotic hands remains a challenge, which has often been addressed by adding extra controllable degrees of freedom, tactile sensors, or specialised extra grasping hardware, at the cost of control complexity and robustness. We introduce a novel reconfigurable four-fingered two-actuator underactuated gripper—the Hydra Hand—that switches between compliant power and rigid precision grasps using a single motor, while generating grasps via a single hydraulic actuator—exhibiting adaptive grasping between finger pairs, enabling the power grasping of two objects simultaneously. The mode switching mechanism and the hand's kinematics are presented and analysed, and performance is tested on two grasping benchmarks: one focused on rigid objects, and the other on items of clothing. The Hydra Hand is shown to excel at grasping large and irregular objects, and small objects with its respective compliant power and rigid precision configurations. The hand's versatility is then showcased by executing the challenging manipulation task of safely grasping and placing a bunch of grapes, and then plucking a single grape from the bunch.