The Human Hand as an Inspiration for Robot Hand Development

The Human Hand as an Inspiration for Robot Hand Development
Author: Ravi Balasubramanian
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-08-27
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9783319380452

“The Human Hand as an Inspiration for Robot Hand Development” presents an edited collection of authoritative contributions in the area of robot hands. The results described in the volume are expected to lead to more robust, dependable, and inexpensive distributed systems such as those endowed with complex and advanced sensing, actuation, computation, and communication capabilities. The twenty-four chapters discuss the field of robotic grasping and manipulation viewed in light of the human hand’s capabilities and push the state-of-the-art in robot hand design and control. Topics discussed include human hand biomechanics, neural control, sensory feedback and perception, and robotic grasp and manipulation. This book will be useful for researchers from diverse areas such as robotics, biomechanics, neuroscience, and anthropologists.

Neuro-Fuzzy Grasp Control for a Teleoperated Five Finger Anthropomorphic Robotic Hand

Neuro-Fuzzy Grasp Control for a Teleoperated Five Finger Anthropomorphic Robotic Hand
Author: Maxwell Joseph Welyhorsky
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021
Genre:
ISBN:

Robots should offer a human-like level of dexterity when handling objects if humans are to be replaced in dangerous and uncertain working environments. This level of dexterity for human-like manipulation must come from both the hardware, and the control. Exact replication of human-like degrees of freedom in mobility for anthropomorphic robotic hands are seen in bulky, costly, fully actuated solutions, while machine learning to apply some level of human-like dexterity in underacted solutions is unable to be applied to a various array of objects. This thesis presents experimental and theoretical contributions of a novel neuro-fuzzy control method for dextrous human grasping based on grasp synergies using a Human Computer Interface glove and upgraded haptic-enabled anthropomorphic Ring Ada dexterous robotic hand. Experimental results proved the efficiency of the proposed Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference Systems to grasp objects with high levels of accuracy.

Neural Computation in Embodied Closed-Loop Systems for the Generation of Complex Behavior: From Biology to Technology

Neural Computation in Embodied Closed-Loop Systems for the Generation of Complex Behavior: From Biology to Technology
Author: Poramate Manoonpong
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2018-10-11
Genre:
ISBN: 2889456056

How can neural and morphological computations be effectively combined and realized in embodied closed-loop systems (e.g., robots) such that they can become more like living creatures in their level of performance? Understanding this will lead to new technologies and a variety of applications. To tackle this research question, here, we bring together experts from different fields (including Biology, Computational Neuroscience, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence) to share their recent findings and ideas and to update our research community. This eBook collects 17 cutting edge research articles, covering neural and morphological computations as well as the transfer of results to real world applications, like prosthesis and orthosis control and neuromorphic hardware implementation.

From Robot to Human Grasping Simulation

From Robot to Human Grasping Simulation
Author: Beatriz León
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2013-09-29
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319018337

The human hand and its dexterity in grasping and manipulating objects are some of the hallmarks of the human species. For years, anatomic and biomechanical studies have deepened the understanding of the human hand’s functioning and, in parallel, the robotics community has been working on the design of robotic hands capable of manipulating objects with a performance similar to that of the human hand. However, although many researchers have partially studied various aspects, to date there has been no comprehensive characterization of the human hand’s function for grasping and manipulation of everyday life objects. This monograph explores the hypothesis that the confluence of both scientific fields, the biomechanical study of the human hand and the analysis of robotic manipulation of objects, would greatly benefit and advance both disciplines through simulation. Therefore, in this book, the current knowledge of robotics and biomechanics guides the design and implementation of a simulation framework focused on manipulation interactions that allows the study of the grasp through simulation. As a result, a valuable framework for the study of the grasp, with relevant applications in several fields such as robotics, biomechanics, ergonomics, rehabilitation and medicine, has been made available to these communities.

Human and Robot Hands

Human and Robot Hands
Author: Matteo Bianchi
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2016-02-24
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 331926706X

This book looks at the common problems both human and robotic hands encounter when controlling the large number of joints, actuators and sensors required to efficiently perform motor tasks such as object exploration, manipulation and grasping. The authors adopt an integrated approach to explore the control of the hand based on sensorimotor synergies that can be applied in both neuroscience and robotics. Hand synergies are based on goal-directed, combined muscle and kinematic activation leading to a reduction of the dimensionality of the motor and sensory space, presenting a highly effective solution for the fast and simplified design of artificial systems. Presented in two parts, the first part, Neuroscience, provides the theoretical and experimental foundations to describe the synergistic organization of the human hand. The second part, Robotics, Models and Sensing Tools, exploits the framework of hand synergies to better control and design robotic hands and haptic/sensing systems/tools, using a reduced number of control inputs/sensors, with the goal of pushing their effectiveness close to the natural one. Human and Robot Hands provides a valuable reference for students, researchers and designers who are interested in the study and design of the artificial hand.

Control of an Anthropomorphic Arm-hand Robot for Grasping and Dexterous Manipulation

Control of an Anthropomorphic Arm-hand Robot for Grasping and Dexterous Manipulation
Author: Kien Cuong Nguyen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2013
Genre:
ISBN:

This thesis deals with the control of an anthropomorphic arm-hand robot by focusing on two aspects: the control of the fingertip force and the coordination between the arm and the hand. The force control of a robotic finger remains difficult despite the advances in current state-of-art. This is due to the small size of the finger, its low communication bandwidth, the lack of precision of the position sensors and the significant backlash in the actuation systems. A new approach controlling the fingertip force by adjusting the joint torque saturation parameter shows better results. Not limited to pure force control, this control method is proved to also have good performance when applying to indirect and hybrid position/force control. Usually ignored in literature while considering dexterous manipulation, the position and movement of the arm play a very important role. Many in-hand manipulation tasks cannot be realized without a proper movement of the arm. One typical example is the rotation of the manipulated object relative to the palm without moving the fingers thanks to inertial and gravitational effects. Besides, arm movement is also an important factor contributing to the appearance of the grasping gestures. In this thesis, the movement of the grasped object under gravitational effect was analyzed and a grasping strategy was elaborated. In addition to this, some mechanical constraints (tenodesis effect in particular) contributing to the human natural gestures were deciphered and such natural gestures were reproduced on an anthropomorphic arm-hand robot in redundant grasping situations.

Underactuated Robotic Hands

Underactuated Robotic Hands
Author: Lionel Birglen
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010-11-30
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9783642096112

This is a cornerstone publication in robotic grasping. The authors have developed an internationally recognized expertise in this area. Additionally, they designed and built several prototypes which attracted the attention of the scientific community. The purpose of this book is to summarize years of research and to present, in an attractive format, the expertise developed by the authors on a new technology for grasping which has achieved great success both in theory and in practice.

Brain-computer Interface Control of an Anthropomorphic Robotic Arm

Brain-computer Interface Control of an Anthropomorphic Robotic Arm
Author: Samuel T. Clanton
Publisher:
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2011
Genre: Human-robot interaction
ISBN:

Abstract: "This thesis describes a brain-computer interface (BCI) system that was developed to allow direct cortical control of 7 active degrees of freedom in a robotic arm. Two monkeys with chronic microelectrode implants in their motor cortices were able to use the arm to complete an oriented grasping task under brain control. This BCI system was created as a clinical prototype to exhibit (1) simultaneous decoding of cortical signals for control of the 3-D translation, 3-D rotation, and 1-D finger aperture of a robotic arm and hand, (2) methods for constructing cortical signal decoding models based on only observation of a moving robot, (3) a generalized method for training subjects to use complex BCI prosthetic robots using a novel form of operator-machine shared control, and (4) integrated kinematic and force control of a brain-controlled prosthetic robot through a novel impedance-based robot controller. This dissertation describes each of these features individually, how their integration enriched BCI control, and results from the monkeys operating the resulting system."

A Two Stage Event Based Data Driven Controller for Improved Grasping of an Artificial Hand

A Two Stage Event Based Data Driven Controller for Improved Grasping of an Artificial Hand
Author: Christopher Abrego
Publisher:
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2019
Genre: Biomimicry
ISBN:

The human hand is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) tool known to mankind for grasping objects. So much so, that researchers have been investigating the development of artificial biomimetic hands in an effort to mimic their functionality and dexterity with the indent to apply the technology to various robotic platforms; ranging from end effectors for industrial pick-and-place robotics, to upper-limb prosthetics, to humanoids. There are certain features that make this endeavor challenging such as the mechanical design, actuation and sensorization, and functionality as well as the interaction from both the view point of interacting with an end user and viewpoint of interacting with an environment. At UT Arlington, the Manufacturing Automation and Robotic Systems lab has developed a Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) software platform along with a 5-finger 8-DOF biomimetic artificial hand (H2) for research purposes. This research focuses on the grasping component of HRI. The aim of this research is to investigate approaches and develop methodologies for autonomous to semi-autonomous object grasping in physical space. Grasp research has progressed in the investigation of pure kinematic grasping starting with a 5-finger 5-DOF hand (H1) to currently an improved 5-finger 8-DOF artificial biomimetic hand with a dexterous 4-DOF thumb. The method used for grasp pattern prediction is based on Artificial Neural Networks trained with experimental data on the HRI platform. A methodology is developed for the prediction of grasp patterns for objects of non-uniform geometric features based on the object and artificial hand geometric dimensions. This information is used to establish the normalized grasp and length ratios which do not discriminate on object category and further allow for their integration in the training data sets for grasp learning. It was observed that pure kinematic grasping produced accurate predictions based on object characteristics, however it was noticed that the there was an issue of undergrasping which sometimes results in unsuccessful grasps. A two stage data/state driven even based controller was proposed to address the unsuccessful grasp scenario. The event based controller has been researched and developed to provide reliable grasping on low compliant convex objects. The controller first stage follows a kinematic objective of properly positioning the fingers for grasping based on the object.The final position of the fingers is predicted by a trained non-discriminatory 3-layer Articial Neural Network based on the characteristics of the desired object. The controller second stage incorporates sensor information for torque/force feedback to ameliorate "under" grasping and reliably hold the object. This controller has been verified with the H2 platform with an over 95% success rate and the controller algorithm has also been shown to be transplantable by successfully performing on other robotic hands such as the H1.