Design and development of robust hands for humanoid robots

Design and development of robust hands for humanoid robot

The design and validation of the R1 personal humanoid

In recent years the robotics field has witnessed an interesting new trend. Several companies started the production of service robots whose aim is to cooperate with humans. The robots developed so far are either rather expensive or unsuitable for manipulation tasks. This article presents the result of a project which wishes to demonstrate the feasibility of an affordable humanoid robot. R1 is able to navigate, and interact with the environment (grasping and carrying objects, operating switches, opening doors etc). The robot is also equipped with a speaker, microphones and it mounts a display in the head to support interaction using natural channels like speech or (simulated) eye movements. The final cost of the robot is expected to range around that of a family car, possibly, when produced in large quantities, even significantly lower. This goal was tackled along three synergistic directions: use of polymeric materials, light-weight design and implementation of novel actuation solutions. These lines, as well as the robot with its main features, are described hereafter

A Systematic Approach to Evaluating and Benchmarking Robotic Hands—The FFP Index

The evaluation of robotic hands is a subjectively biased, complex process. The fields pertaining to robotic hands are human-centric in nature, making human hands a good standard for benchmark comparisons of robotic hands. To achieve this, we propose a new evaluation index, where we evaluate robotic hands on three fronts: their form, features and performance. An evaluation on how anthropomorphic robotic hands are in basic mobility, and appearance constitutes the “Form„, while features that can be read, changed and actuated for effective control of robotic hands constitutes the “Features„. We derived these key features from an extensive analysis of robotic hands in literature. Finally, the robotic hands carry out a series of tasks that evaluate their “Performance„. An individual score for each category is drawn and we carry out a three-pronged analysis. We also propose an additional feature in the form of price to provide context when analysing multiple hands