AN INTERACTIVE TELE-OPERATED ANTHROPOMORPHIC ROBOT HAND: OSAKA CITY

In this paper we present a design of an anthropomorphic robot hand called Osaka-City-UniversityHand (OCU-Hand). In our proposed hand the size and weight have been compromised in order to achieve human-like performance with the prime objective of grasping different shapes firmly. Our proposed hand is composed of five fingers with total 15 degrees of freedom (DOF). In addition, 3 DOF are given for a dexterous designed wrist. All the joints of the OCU-Hand are driven by servomotors built into the fingers. The thumb finger in our proposed hand has a special design that improves the implementation of the hand. Also in our proposed hand, the palm has a unique design so as to improve the hand grasping and handling of different shape objects. The size of the hand is almost the same as a human hand. Distributed tactile and force sensors are appended to the OCU-Hand as a feedback system in order to grasp an object firmly. A new control strategy is to be adopted, in which a master light-weight glove is to be used to drive the OCU-Hand as a slave. A novel and unique interactive and assistive mode is included within master-slave control strategy, in which the OCU-Hand is assisting its operators in order to reduce the load on the operator and perform the usual operations in a better manner or even faster than the usual. During the assistive mode the operator is enabled to perform other tasks than the master-slave driving while he has the master-glove on.