Abstract
Recently, the studies of life support robots have conducted actively. These robots have robot hands to assist the elderly and disabled people also and are required intrinsic safety, because there are many cases to contact mechaniually with humans. On the other hand, they are need to grasp various shape objects because there are wide variety in the living space. Conventional robot hands what can grasp such an object, are often consisted of the metal frames, electrical motors and gears in order to keep accuracy. These mechanisms are inevitably complex, high weight and stiffness. If the robot hand is a high weight, the moment to elementary part of manipulator is increased. For example, when these robots operate near people, it is also necessary to do at low speed to ensure safety. This case could make work efficiency down. Therefore, it is desirable that robot hands are lightweight and soft. We propose the extremely lightweight and soft robot hand using a pneumatic driven thin plastic-film actuator based on pleated structures. In this paper, the basic properties of the extremely lightweight and flexible the prototype robot hand, it is an object to be experimentally clarify the gripping force and holdable shapes.
