蠕動運動する指による把持物体のハンドリングを目指したロボットハンド

抄録

This paper proposes a caterpillar-inspired finger for a robot hand that produces the peristaltic motion consisting of bending and contraction to realize in-hand manipulation. One of the motions that the traditional grippers made of hard/rigid materials (e.g., parallel grippers) cannot do, but human-fingers can, is in-hand manipulation. We believe that enabling this motion with a soft gripper is one of the key elements to achieve dexterous manipulation with a simple structure. Also, it will contribute significantly to the design and control of robot hands in the future. In this research, to demonstrate the effectiveness of applying peristaltic motion to a robot hand’s finger, we conducted a dynamics simulation and confirmed that motion can carry an object in a certain direction.