Analysis and Dimensional Synthesis of a Robotic Hand Based on the Stewart-Gough Platform

Author(s):  
Connor M. McCann ◽  
Aaron M. Dollar

In this paper, we study the dimensional synthesis of a Stewart-Gough platform-inspired dexterous robotic hand, seeking to optimize the hand’s geometric design parameters to achieve the largest possible 6-degree-of-freedom workspace of a grasped object serving in the place of the “platform.” We present an analysis of the hand mechanism that considers both object stability from frictional contact forces as well as kinematic motion transmissibility, seeking a balance between these two properties. We examine the effect of variations in the kinematic and frictional parameters on both the workspace size of the hand as well as on the motion quality throughout the workspace across a range of grasped object sizes. We then present a spectrum of optimal designs that weight these two performance criteria differently. Most notably, the palm radius of the hand was found to have the greatest effect on the workspace size, with smaller palms exhibiting significantly larger workspaces. Overall, this work serves to inform the design process for dexterous robotic hands based on this common kinematic configuration, with the ultimate goal of increasing the dexterity of robotic manipulators to facilitate more versatile interactions with the environment.

Author(s):  
Raymond Guo ◽  
Vienny Nguyen ◽  
Lei Niu ◽  
Lyndon Bridgwater

There has been continuous research and development to add more actuators into robotic hands to increase their dexterity. However, dexterous hands require complex control and are more costly to build. Therefore, many researchers and commercial enterprises have begun developing under-actuated robotic hands with fewer actuators and passive mechanical adaptation to not only reduce complexity and cost, but to also achieve better grasp performance in unstructured settings. This paper presents the design and analysis of the Valkyrie hand — a four fingered, tendon-driven, and under-actuated robotic hand that balances dexterity and simplicity with total 14 joints, and six degrees of actuated freedom. A derivation is provided of general dynamic and static equations for the analysis of a tendon driven mechanism, based on Euler-Lagrange formulation. The equations were used to evaluate the design parameters’ impact on the hand grasp shape and closing effort, and also validated against a design case study.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoqing Li ◽  
Ziyu Chen ◽  
Chao Ma

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to achieve stable grasping and dexterous in-hand manipulation, the control of the multi-fingered robotic hand is a difficult problem as the hand has many degrees of freedom with various grasp configurations. Design/methodology/approach To achieve this goal, a novel object-level impedance control framework with optimized grasp force and grasp quality is proposed for multi-fingered robotic hand grasping and in-hand manipulation. The minimal grasp force optimization aims to achieve stable grasping satisfying friction cone constraint while keeping appropriate contact forces without damage to the object. With the optimized grasp quality function, optimal grasp quality can be obtained by dynamically sliding on the object from initial grasp configuration to final grasp configuration. By the proposed controller, the in-hand manipulation of the grasped object can be achieved with compliance to the environment force. The control performance of the closed-loop robotic system is guaranteed by appropriately choosing the design parameters as proved by a Lyapunove function. Findings Simulations are conducted to validate the efficiency and performance of the proposed controller with a three-fingered robotic hand. Originality/value This paper presents a method for robotic optimal grasping and in-hand manipulation with a compliant controller. It may inspire other related researchers and has great potential for practical usage in a widespread of robot applications.


Author(s):  
Neda Hassanzadeh ◽  
Xiangwei He ◽  
Alba Perez-Gracia

The design of multi-fingered robotic hands can follow a kinematic synthesis approach, in which a trajectory or set of points and higher derivatives are defined for each fingertip. The output of the dimensional synthesis is a set of joint axes, effectively defining the basic kinematic structure of the hand. In the case of spatial motion, there seems to be a big gap between the results of the dimensional synthesis and a real and effective detailed design of the robotic hand, this being one of the reasons why synthesis is not regularly used in the design of robotic hands. This work aims to reduce the gap from kinematic synthesis to detailed, computer-aided design of robotic hands. In order to do so, the output of the dimensional synthesis is first used as the input of a link-based optimization process, aim to bring to reasonable values requirements such as link lengths, internal friction forces and obstacle avoidance, including self-intersection. The optimized results are automatically imported to a popular solid modeling software, creating reference geometry for parts, and joint axes and anchor points for the final hand assembly. At the same time, a database of hand parts is presented to the user to select and adapt in order to create a first realistic assembly of the robotic hand. The output of the process is a first detailed design of the robotic hand, which can be a good starting point for the designer to implement transmission and actuation in further stages.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (15) ◽  
pp. 5098
Author(s):  
Miguel Neto ◽  
Pedro Ribeiro ◽  
Ricardo Nunes ◽  
Lorenzo Jamone ◽  
Alexandre Bernardino ◽  
...  

Tactile sensing is crucial for robots to manipulate objects successfully. However, integrating tactile sensors into robotic hands is still challenging, mainly due to the need to cover small multi-curved surfaces with several components that must be miniaturized. In this paper, we report the design of a novel magnetic-based tactile sensor to be integrated into the robotic hand of the humanoid robot Vizzy. We designed and fabricated a flexible 4 × 2 matrix of Si chips of magnetoresistive spin valve sensors that, coupled with a single small magnet, can measure contact forces from 0.1 to 5 N on multiple locations over the surface of a robotic fingertip; this design is innovative with respect to previous works in the literature, and it is made possible by careful engineering and miniaturization of the custom-made electronic components that we employ. In addition, we characterize the behavior of the sensor through a COMSOL simulation, which can be used to generate optimized designs for sensors with different geometries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei An ◽  
Jun Wei ◽  
Xiaoyu Lu ◽  
Jian S. Dai ◽  
Yanzeng Li

AbstractCurrent research on robotic dexterous hands mainly focuses on designing new finger and palm structures, as well as developing smarter control algorithms. Although the dimensional synthesis of dexterous hands with traditional rigid palms has been carried out, research on the dimensional synthesis of dexterous hands with metamorphic palms remains insufficient. This study investigated the dimensional synthesis of a palm of a novel metamorphic multi-fingered hand, and explored the geometric design for maximizing the precision manipulation workspace. Different indexes were used to value the workspace of the metamorphic hand, and the best proportions between the five links of the palm to obtain the optimal workspace of the metamorphic hand were explored. Based on the fixed total length of the palm member, four nondimensional design parameters that determine the size of the palm were introduced; through the discretization method, the influence of the four design parameters on the workspace of the metamorphic hand with full-actuated fingers and under-actuated fingers was analyzed. Based on the analysis of the metamorphic multi-fingered hand, the symmetrical structure of the palm was designed, resulting in the largest workspace of the multi-fingered hand, and proved that the metamorphic palm has a massive upgrade for the workspace of underactuated fingers. This research contributed to the dimensional synthesis of metamorphic dexterous hands, with practical significance for the design and optimization of novel metamorphic hands.


2021 ◽  
pp. 109963622110204
Author(s):  
Abdallah Ghazlan ◽  
Tuan Ngo ◽  
Tay Son Le ◽  
Tu Van Le

Trabecular bone possesses a complex hierarchical structure of plate- and strut-like elements, which is analogous to structural systems encountered in engineering practice. In this work, key structural features of trabecular bone are mimicked to uncover effective energy dissipation mechanisms under blast loading. To this end, several key design parameters were identified to develop a bone-like unit cell. A computer script was then developed to automatically generate bone-like finite element models with many combinations of these design parameters, which were simulated under blast loading. The optimal structure was identified and its performance was benchmarked against traditional engineered cellular structures, including those with hexagonal, re-entrant and square cellular geometries. The bone-like structure showed superior performance over its engineered counterparts using the peak transmitted reaction force and energy dissipation as the key performance criteria.


2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Rouhani ◽  
M. J. Nategh

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the workspace and dexterity of a microhexapod which is a 6-degrees of freedom (DOF) parallel compliant manipulator, and also to investigate its dimensional synthesis to maximize the workspace and the global dexterity index at the same time. Microassembly is so essential in the current industry for manufacturing complicated structures. Most of the micromanipulators suffer from their restricted workspace because of using flexure joints compared to the conventional ones. In addition, the controllability of micromanipulators inside the whole workspace is very vital. Thus, it is very important to select the design parameters in a way that not only maximize the workspace but also its global dexterity index. Design/methodology/approach – Microassembly is so essential in the current industry for manufacturing complicated structures. Most of the micromanipulators suffer from their restricted workspace because of using flexure joints compared to the conventional ones. In addition, the controllability of micromanipulators inside the whole workspace is very vital. Thus, it is very important to select the design parameters in a way that not only maximize the workspace but also its global dexterity index. Findings – It has been shown that the proposed procedure for the workspace calculation can considerably speed the required calculations. The optimization results show that a converged-diverged configuration of pods and an increase in the difference between the moving and the stationary platforms’ radii cause the global dexterity index to increase and the workspace to decrease. Originality/value – The proposed algorithm for the workspace analysis is very important, especially when it is an objective function of an optimization problem based on the search method. In addition, using screw theory can simply construct the homogeneous Jacobian matrix. The proposed methodology can be used for any other micromanipulator.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Domenico Tommasino ◽  
Matteo Bottin ◽  
Giulio Cipriani ◽  
Alberto Doria ◽  
Giulio Rosati

Abstract In robotics the risk of collisions is present both in industrial applications and in remote handling. If a collision occurs, the impact may damage both the robot and external equipment, which may result in successive imprecise robot tasks or line stops, reducing robot efficiency. As a result, appropriate collision avoidance algorithms should be used or, if it is not possible, the robot must be able to react to impacts reducing the contact forces. For this purpose, this paper focuses on the development of a special end-effector that can withstand impacts and is able to protect the robot from impulsive forces. The novel end-effector is based on a bi-stable mechanism that decouples the dynamics of the end-effector from the dynamics of the robot. The intrinsically non-linear behavior of the end-effector is investigated with the aid of numerical simulations. The effect of design parameters and the operating conditions are analyzed and the interaction between the functioning of the bi-stable mechanism and the control system is studied. In particular, the effect of the mechanism in different scenarios characterized by different robot velocities is shown. Results of numerical simulations assess the validity of the proposed end-effector, which can lead to large reductions in impact forces.


Author(s):  
Alfonso Callejo ◽  
Daniel Dopico

Algorithms for the sensitivity analysis of multibody systems are quickly maturing as computational and software resources grow. Indeed, the area has made substantial progress since the first academic methods and examples were developed. Today, sensitivity analysis tools aimed at gradient-based design optimization are required to be as computationally efficient and scalable as possible. This paper presents extensive verification of one of the most popular sensitivity analysis techniques, namely the direct differentiation method (DDM). Usage of such method is recommended when the number of design parameters relative to the number of outputs is small and when the time integration algorithm is sensitive to accumulation errors. Verification is hereby accomplished through two radically different computational techniques, namely manual differentiation and automatic differentiation, which are used to compute the necessary partial derivatives. Experiments are conducted on an 18-degree-of-freedom, 366-dependent-coordinate bus model with realistic geometry and tire contact forces, which constitutes an unusually large system within general-purpose sensitivity analysis of multibody systems. The results are in good agreement; the manual technique provides shorter runtimes, whereas the automatic differentiation technique is easier to implement. The presented results highlight the potential of manual and automatic differentiation approaches within general-purpose simulation packages, and the importance of formulation benchmarking.


2006 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 143-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Huber ◽  
Horst Baier

An optimization approach is derived from typical design problems of hybrid material structures, which provides the engineer with optimal designs. Complex geometries, different materials and manufacturing aspects are handled as design parameters using a genetic algorithm. To take qualitative information into account, fuzzy rule based systems are utilized in order to consider all relevant aspects in the optimization problem. This paper shows results for optimization tasks on component and structural level.


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