SFB588-R3 Sensing and Grasping Project

A new robot manipulator has been developed at the Institute for Applied Computer Science within the framework of Subproject R3 "Sensing and Grasping" that is part of the SFB588 Special Research Field "Humanoid Robots - Learning and Cooperating Multimodal Robots". For the first time, the fluidic five-finger hand combines the grasping properties of a symmetric three-jaw grasper with the outer appearance of an artificial anthropomorphous hand. The anthropomorphous grasper comprises two jaw-type plates made of carbon which form the palm of the grasper while serving as bearing surfaces for the fingers at the same time. The grasper has five fixed fingers, the thumb being permanently in direct opposition to the index finger and middle finger and, together with these, in symmetry with the extremities in relation to the fulcrum between two jaw plates. All joints are driven by flexible fluidic actuators using either air or neutral fluids as a drive medium. The modularity of the entire structure ensures that the number of envelopes can be varied. The symmetric arrangement of the extremities between thumb, index finger, and middle finger allows a precise three-point grasp, cylinder grasp, index positioning, and different other grasping combinations.