Underwater gripping control with waterproof glove for robot hand

Abstract

With the expansion of robots, researchers have focused on robot tasks with waterproof functions. Although numerous underwater‐robot studies have been published recently, there has been minimal research on the waterproofing of robotic hands. The aim of this study is to develop an underwater gripping control strategy for a robot hand using a waterproof glove. By using a silicone‐rubber‐based waterproof glove, the robot hand finished the underwater gripping task. However, an error occurred during the gripping task because of the resistance force of the glove. To reduce the error, torque control experiments were conducted in two ways. In the first, a grooved glove was fabricated to reduce the resistance force. In the second, a modified control model with torque compensation was employed. In the experiments, it was observed that the torque compensation control model was more feasible than improving the shape of the glove for underwater gripping.