Multifingered grasping for robotic manipulation

Robotic hand increases the adaptability of grasping and manipulating objects with its system.But this added adaptability of grasping convolute the process of grasping the object. The analysis of the grasp is very much complicated and large number of configuration for grasping is to be investigated. Handling of objects with irregular shapes and that of flexible/soft objects by ordinary robot grippers is difficult. It is required that various objects with different shapes or sizes could be grasped and manipulated by one robot hand mechanism for the sake of factory automation and labour saving. Dexterous grippers will be the appropriate solution to such problems. Corresponding to such needs, the present work is towards the design and development of an articulated mechanical hand with five fingers and twenty five degrees-of-freedom having an improved grasp capability. In the work, the distance between the Thumb and Finger and the workspace generated by the hand is calculated so as to know about the size and shape of the object that could be grasped.Further the Force applied by the Fingers and there point of application is also being calculated so as to have a stable force closure grasp. The method introduced in present study reduces the complexity and computational burden of grasp synthesis by examining grasps at the finger level. A detailed study on the force closure grasping capability and quality has been carried out. The workspace of the five fingered hand has been used as the maximum spatial envelope. The problem has been considered with positive grips constructed as non-negative linear combinations of primitive and pure wrenches. The attention has been restricted to systems of wrenches generated by the hand fingers assuming Coulomb friction. In order to validate the algorithm vis-a-vis the designed five fingered dexterous hand, example problems have been solved with multiple sets of contact points on various shaped objects.Since the designed hand is capable of enveloping and grasping an object mechanically, it can be used conveniently and widely in manufacturing automation and for medical rehabilitation purpose. This work presents the kinematic design and the grasping analysis of such a hand

Kinematic Analysis of Multi-Fingered, Anthropomorphic Robotic Hands

The ability of stable grasping and fine manipulation with the multi-fingered robot hand with required precision and dexterity is playing an increasingly important role in the applications like service robots, rehabilitation, humanoid robots, entertainment robots, industries etc.. A number of multi-fingered robotic hands have been developed by various researchers in the past. The distinct advantages of a multi-fingered robot hand having structural similarity with human hand motivate the need for an anthropomorphic robot hand. Such a hand provides a promising base for supplanting human hand in execution of tedious, complicated and dangerous tasks, especially in situations such as manufacturing, space, undersea etc. These can also be used in orthopaedic rehabilitation of humans for improving the quality of the life of people having orthopedically and neurological disabilities. The developments so far are mostly driven by the application requirements. There are a number of bottlenecks with industrial grippers as regards to the stability of grasping objects of irregular geometries or complex manipulation operations. A multi-fingered robot hand can be made to mimic the movements of a human hand. The present piece of research work attempts to conceptualize and design a multi-fingered, anthropomorphic robot hand by structurally imitating the human hand. In the beginning, a brief idea about the history, types of robotic hands and application of multi-fingered hands in various fields are presented. A review of literature based on different aspects of the multi-fingered hand like structure, control, optimization, gasping etc. is made. Some of the important and more relevant literatures are elaborately discussed and a brief analysis is made on the outcomes and shortfalls with respect to multi-fingered hands. Based on the analysis of the review of literature, the research work aims at developing an improved anthropomorphic robot hand model in which apart from the four fingers and a thumb, the palm arch effect of human hand is also considered to increase its dexterity. A robotic hand with five anthropomorphic fingers including the thumb and palm arch effect having 25 degrees-of-freedom in all is investigated in the present work. Each individual finger is considered as an open loop kinematic chain and each finger segment is considered as a link of the manipulator. The wrist of the hand is considered as a fixed point. The kinematic analyses of the model for both forward kinematics and inverse kinematic are carried out. The trajectories of the tip positions of the thumb and the fingers with respect to local coordinate system are determined and plotted. This gives the extreme position of the fingertips which is obtained from the forward kinematic solution with the help of MATLAB. Similarly, varying all the joint iv angles of the thumb and fingers in their respective ranges, the reachable workspace of the hand model is obtained. Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) is used for solving the inverse kinematic problem of the fingers. Since the multi-fingered hand grasps the object mainly through its fingertips and the manipulation of the object is facilitated by the fingers due to their dexterity, the grasp is considered to be force-closure grasp. The grasping theory and different types of contacts between the fingertip and object are presented and the conditions for stable and equilibrium grasp are elaborately discussed. The proposed hand model is simulated to grasp five different shaped objects with equal base dimension and height. The forces applied on the fingertip during grasping are calculated. The hand model is also analysed using ANSYS to evaluate the stresses being developed at various points in the thumb and fingers. This analysis was made for the hand considering two different hand materials i.e. aluminium alloy and structural steel. The solution obtained from the forward kinematic analysis of the hand determines the maximum size for differently shaped objects while the solution to the inverse kinematic problem indicates the configurations of the thumb and the fingers inside the workspace of the hand. The solutions are predicted in which all joint angles are within their respective ranges. The results of the stress analysis of the hand model show that the structure of the fingers and the hand as a whole is capable of handling the selected objects. The robot hand under investigation can be realized and can be a very useful tool for many critical areas such as fine manipulation of objects, combating orthopaedic or neurological impediments, service robotics, entertainment robotics etc. The dissertation concludes with a summary of the contribution and the scope of further work