Development of a New Multi-Fingered Robot Hand Using Ultrasonic Motors and Its Control System

In this paper, a new multi-fingered robot hand using ultrasonic motors and its control system are developed. The developed robot hand has four fingers and fifteen articulated joints. The distal joint of each finger is directly driven by ultrasonic motor and all joints except the distal joint has low transmission gear mechanism with the motor. The developed robot hand has several advantages in size compared to a hand using conventional DC motors, and in performance compared to a hand using tendons to drive joints. A VME-bus based hand control system and ultrasonic motor driver are also developed. The performance of the hand is confirmed by using the developed control system in real-time.

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