Development of Robotic Hand System with Soft Skin for Realizing Reliable Grasping and Manipulation

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The goal of this research is to develop a robotic hand system covered my soft skin, which is softer than usually considered, for the purpose of reliable and safe realization of grasping and manipulation of objects and to establish a control methodology of this hand system. Taking advantage of this soft skin structure, this system can realize both soft grasp state that largely complies with external forces exerted to the grasped object, and hard grasp state that hardly complies with external forces even when they are large. Moreover, due to the deformation of the soft finger skin, the contact area between the object and fingers is larger than the case of hard fingers, contributing to reliable grasping and manipulation. Grasping of objects with fingers placed on their edges will also be possible.A brief overview of the results obtained this year is as follows.(1) Development of a control algorithm for the hand-arm system : To improve adaptability of the system to the work environment, a function of adjusting the position and orientation of the arm portion based on a partial task space trajectory data during performing the task is integrated into the control algorithm.(2) Experiment and evaluation of grasping and manipulation tasks : The validity of the control algorithm developed in(1) has been experimentally demonstrated for the task of turning cranks.(3) Grasping unknown objects based on visual information : A procedure has been established for recognizing the shape of an unknown object from the visual information obtained by an omni-directional camera attached to the hand, and for obtaining the best positions for grasping it by a multi-fingered hand. The usefulness of the procedure has been demonstrated by some experiments.(4) Discussion and preparing report : Results obtained from the research work during the last three years have been reviewed and summarized. Some future research directions have been pointed out. Final report is now being prepared.