On the development of intrinsically-actuated, multisensory dexterous robotic hands

Restoring human hand function by mechatronic means is very challenging in robotics research. In this paper, we first make a brief review on the development of dexterous robotic/prosthetic hands, and then detail our design philosophy of several robot hands. We make a concentration on a type of intrinsically-actuated robot hands, wherein the driving, transmission, and control elements are totally embedded in the hand. According to different application scenarios, we develop robot hands in two parallel lines, dexterous robotic hand and anthropomorphic prosthetic hand. In both, the hand’s actuation, sensing, and control subsystems are highly integrated and modularized. This feature endows our robot hands with compact appearances, simple integration, and large flexibilities. At last, we give some perspectives on the future development of dexterous hands from the aspects of structure, functionality, and control strategies. © 2016, Liu et al.