Mechanical Fingers Controlled by Machine and Their Applications to Materials Handling

Abstract

Recently the artificial hands have been investigated from various viewpoints and some hardwares have been presented. Compared these hands with natural hands, they are extremely lackingin degrees of freedom of the motion, and they can not do dexterous works. The author has made amodel of mechanical fingers having many degrees of freedom in order to investigate the possibilityof making highly efficient mechanical fingers.
The model made by the author has three fingers, which correspond to the thumb, index fingerand middle finger respectively. Each finger has three degrees of freedom, consequently, there arenine degrees of freedom, and these nine joints can be moved independently by compressed air. Eachjoint has sense organ which detects the angular displacement of a joint.
Manipulators are worked by human operators, but this model can be worked automatically according to predetermined programs without aids of men. As an example the rotation of a graspedobject by sequentially changing grasping fingers is performed, such a complicated work can not be, done by other artificial hands which have been made till now.
These artificial fingers possessing advanced functions may be used as powerful control organsof materials handling, which is contained almost every industrial process. However, actual applications of mechanical fingers to industrial processes have many difficult problems, the largest problemmay be the pattern recognition.