Leif P. Jentoft
Papers
7
Total Citations
916
H-Index
6
About
Leif P. Jentoft is a leading roboticist whose work sits at the intersection of mechanical design, sensing, and dexterous manipulation. He is best known for his pivotal role in developing the iRobot-Harvard-Yale (iHY) Hand, a compliant, underactuated hand introduced in a 2014 paper that has garnered nearly 600 citations. This durable, low-cost platform demonstrated that robust grasping and in-hand repositioning could be achieved with just five actuators, challenging the prevailing complexity of traditional dexterous hands. Jentoft also pioneered a novel approach to tactile sensing, adapting inexpensive MEMS barometers into customizable tactile array sensors (2014, over 200 citations), making high-resolution contact sensing accessible to the broader robotics community. His research further explores the integration of intrinsic sensors into polymeric structures and the study of human grasp compensation under uncertainty. By focusing on practical, scalable solutions, Jentoft’s contributions have fundamentally shifted how the field thinks about building hands that are both capable and reliable, laying the groundwork for more widespread robotic manipulation in real-world environments.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1A compliant, underactuated hand for robust manipulation597 citations · 2014
- 2
- 3Contact sensing and grasping performance of compliant hands81 citations · 2009
- 4
- 5Grasp Mapping Between a 3-Finger Haptic Device and a Robotic Hand12 citations · 2014
- 6Human reach-to-grasp compensation with object pose uncertainty6 citations · 2013
- 7How to Think About Grasping Systems - Basis Grasps and Variation Budgets3 citations · 2017