Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.3390/s24082585

Publication Title

Sensors

Volume

24

Pages

2585 (1-17)

Abstract

Haptic hands and grippers, designed to enable skillful object manipulation, are pivotal for high-precision interaction with environments. These technologies are particularly vital in fields such as minimally invasive surgery, where they enhance surgical accuracy and tactile feedback: in the development of advanced prosthetic limbs, offering users improved functionality and a more natural sense of touch, and within industrial automation and manufacturing, they contribute to more efficient, safe, and flexible production processes. This paper presents the development of a two-finger robotic hand that employs simple yet precise strategies to manipulate objects without damaging or dropping them. Our innovative approach fused force-sensitive resistor (FSR) sensors with the average current of servomotors to enhance both the speed and accuracy of grasping. Therefore, we aim to create a grasping mechanism that is more dexterous than grippers and less complex than robotic hands. To achieve this goal, we designed a two-finger robotic hand with two degrees of freedom on each finger; an FSR was integrated into each fingertip to enable object categorization and the detection of the initial contact. Subsequently, servomotor currents were monitored continuously to implement impedance control and maintain the grasp of objects in a wide range of stiffness. The proposed hand categorized objects’ stiffness upon initial contact and exerted accurate force by fusing FSR and the motor currents. An experimental test was conducted using a Yale–CMU–Berkeley (YCB) object set consisted of a foam ball, an empty soda can, an apple, a glass cup, a plastic cup, and a small milk packet. The robotic hand successfully picked up these objects from a table and sat them down without inflicting any damage or dropping them midway. Our results represent a significant step forward in developing haptic robotic hands with advanced object perception and manipulation capabilities.

Rights

© 2024 by the authors.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License.

Data Availability

Article states: "The data will be available on Github."

Original Publication Citation

Mohammadi, V., Shahbad, R., Hosseini, M., Gholampour, M. H., Shiry Ghidary, S., Najafi, F., & Behboodi, A. (2024). Development of a two-finger haptic robotic hand with novel stiffness detection and impedance control. Sensors, 24, 1-17, Article 2585. https://doi.org/10.3390/s24082585

ORCID

0009-0001-9566-9326 (Gholampour)

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