Fingertip Position and Force Control for Dexterous Manipulation through Model-Based Control of Hand-Exoskeleton-Environment

Despite mechanical advancements in assistive hand exoskeletons, the manipulation ability they provide has remained far inferior to that of a healthy human hand. State-of-the-art control strategies are mainly focused on robot joint-level position control, although accurate control of fingertip positions and forces is required for human-like dexterity. Due to nonlinear relationships between inputs and outputs, dexterous manipulation requires accurate models of interaction between the fingers, the exoskeleton, and the fingertip space. In this research, we utilize model-based control to achieve desired fingertip position and forces with a multi-degree-of-freedom (multi-DOF) exoskeleton for the first time. We compare it with conventional control methods and demonstrate the performance to be superior and within human accuracy levels.