Progress in the development of anthropomorphic fluidic hands for a humanoid robot

Abstract

New lightweight anthropomorphic hands are presented for application in a humanoid robot. These hands possess 13 to 15 degrees of freedom and are driven by flexible fluidic actuators that are integrated in the finger joints. The compact design of the hands contains a pressure unit that is housed in the metacarpus. Alternatively, the pressure unit can be mounted externally, which leads to a further mass reduction. The new design and its performance shall be described in the present article.