Development of a High-speed, High-accuracy Robot Hand for Micromanipulation

This study reports the development of a highspeed, high-accuracy robotic hand with the aim of implementing flexible and fast micromanipulation. The robotic hand, which has two fingers, each with three degrees of freedom, was tested for rapidity and accuracy to determine whether it was capable of micromanipulation. Our end goal was to enable it to handle smaller objects than humans can, more dexterously and quickly than them, by incorporating accuracy into the design of prevalent high-speed robotic hands. The size of the target objects to be manipulated was of the order of submillimeter. With regard to rapidity, we showed that each joint of the hand exhibited the same speed of movement as conventional high-speed robotic hands. In order to verify accuracy, we showed that the positioning accuracy of the fingertip was 10 [mu m] at 0.20 [s] when all joints were actuated pi/2 [rad], which was sufficient to manipulate objects of submillimeter size. Hence, the proposed robotic hand has the potential to manipulate micrometer-sized objects if combined with high-resolution visual feedback systems.