Design and control of a shape memory alloy based dexterous robot hand

Abstract

Modern externally powered upper-body prostheses are conventionally actuated by electric servomotors. Although these motors achieve reasonable kinematic performance, they are voluminous and heavy. Deterring factors such as these lead to a substantial proportion of upper extremity amputees avoiding the use of their prostheses. Therefore, it is apparent that there exists a need for functional prosthetic devices that are compact and lightweight. The realization of such a device requires an alternative actuation technology, and biological inspiration suggests that tendon based systems are advantageous. Shape memory alloys are a type of smart material that exhibit an actuation mechanism resembling the biological equivalent. As such, shape memory alloy enabled devices promise to be of major importance in the future of dexterous robotics, and of prosthetics in particular. This paper investigates the design, instrumentation, and control issues surrounding the practical application of shape memory alloys as artificial muscles in a three-fingered robot hand.

Fin Ray® Effect Inspired Soft Robotic Gripper: From the RoboSoft Grand Challenge toward Optimization

“…Even today, researchers and companies are continuing to develop biomimetic robotic manipulators that are predominantly hard (Bar-Cohen and Breazeal, 2003;Price et al, 2007;Bundhoo et al, 2009;Gilardi et al, 2010;Shin et al, 2010) despite the fact that only just over one-tenth of the human body's weight is skeletal (Kim et al, 2013). The soft nature of the human hand enables it to pick up and interact with a wide variety of objects from a fragile eggshell to a heavy rock.…”

Experimental Study of a Shape Memory Alloy Actuation System for a Novel Prosthetic Hand

“…As a continuance of this work, an SMA actuated hand (the Rutgers Hand) was rapid prototyped comprising of 5 fingers and 20 DOF (DeLaurentis and Mavroidis, 2002). Price et al, 2007 showed practical application of shape memory alloys as actuators (Price et al, 2007) in a three-fingered robotic hand (Fig. 4b).…”

Port-Hamiltonian analysis of a novel robotic finger concept for minimal actuation variable impedance grasping

“…shape memory alloys [21], air muscles [22], fluidic actuators [6]) have been tried of which electromagnetic motors are still the most successful. Due to volume restrictions, most of the grasping devices use remote actuators with tendon transmissions to drive the finger joints from outside the hand without backlash and other gearing difficulties.…”