Robot Hand with a Foldable Planar Mechanism

—Outline of Hardware and Strategy for Imitating Shape of Human Hand—

Abstract

This paper proposes a six-degree-of-freedom robot hand with a foldable planar mechanism. The robot hand, which has two plates that serve as fingers, imitates the shape of a human hand to allow it to manipulate various objects. We show the mechanism and strategy used by the robot hand to handle various objects. The results of experiments of pinching and grasping an object show the effectiveness of the proposed system.