Japan STA Program: Control of the Contact Forces of a Robotic Hand

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This award will provide supplementary support to enable Dr. Prasad Akella of Stanford University to conduct collaborative research with Dr. Kazuo Tanie for 22 months at the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory (MEL) in Japan. Akella and Tanie will apply Dr. Akella's behavior models for soft fingertips in order to better manipulate a three fingered robotic hand which was developed by Tanie. Controlling the contact forces of a robotic hand when it is tasked to grasp an object is quite difficult. Akella has found that soft fingertips stabilize a robotic hand by dissipating energy and improve its dynamic performance. In order to overcome the unstable contact forces of Tanie's robotic hand, the team will develop force control software to complement Akella's mechanical design solution of soft fingertips. Developing such an effective methodology for implementing force control in manipulators can lead to more advanced robots which could be used for more complex tasks in industrial as well as remote settings such as undersea or in space.