Differential Geometry Based Analysis and Synthesis of a Multifingered Robotic Hand With a Metamorphic Palm

Abstract

This paper presents a novel robotic hand with a metamorphic palm which changes the traditional structure of a robotic hand. Based on this new hand structure, the paper investigates motion of robotic fingers with respect to the palm by introducing finger operation-planes and by revealing the relationship between finger motion and palm motion. The study presents normals of the finger operation-planes as function of the input angle of the palm and relates finger motion to palm motion. This leads to the co-axial condition of the finger-palm relationship that is then converted to the coplanar condition of normals of all finger operation-planes. The paper then maps the known normals of the first two finger operation-planes to a spherical image space and produces the Gaussian image of normals and a cone of a normal, leading to differential geometry based analysis of the normals of the operation planes and synthesis of the metamorphic palm.