Dexterous robotic hand with humanoid finger structure and large coverage tactile sensing ability for Human-Robot Interactions

Tactile sensory is the most direct source of receiving external physical contact information. Most current robotic hands majorly focus on tactile perception in the fingertip or palm areas for tasks such as object manipulation or recognition. However, it also leads to the missing of tactile information when the robotic hand is engaged with full-hand physical interactions. This paper presents the design of a dexterous robotic hand with large-coverage tactile sensory. Each finger has two active joints driven by DC motors through compact gear transmission a coupling joint driven by a linkage. The entire robotic hand is equipped with flexible iontronic tactile sensors with 492 sensing units covering the fingers, palm, and back of the hand. Human subjects can teach the dexterous robotic hand through tactile information to perform autonomous object grasping, environmental exploration, and physical human-robot physical interaction tasks.