Investigation of soft robotic hand using tendon-driven mechanism of robotic manipulator.

A soft robotic hand is a robotic end-effector that can pick and place objects with high flexibility to handle fragile objects and adapt to unstructured and irregular shapes. One promising approach to handling soft objects is combining the rigid structure of the tendon-driven robot hand with elastomeric or rubber elements. It is essential to elaborate the tendon-driven mechanisms either in the closed-loop or open-loop kinematic system o obtain proper behavior of the under-actuation robotic hand. More specifically, the functional representation of kinematic construction of related components like shafts, pulley, and tendons must be carefully considered. This paper presents a systematic review of some recent technological advances in the area of soft robotic grippers. To analyze the tendon-driven mechanism (TDM), the kinematic synthesis is performed in this paper using graph theory. After the displacement equations are generated, the input and output torque (forces) connections are further appropriately obtained. Finally, a proposed design is given for a soft 2 degree of freedom (DOF) robotic gripper through exploring the openhand Yale model T, which employs soft rubber as the connector to each rigid link. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]