Design and experiences with DLR hand II

In this paper we presents the design of the dexterous DLR Hand II and experiments performed with it so far. In various experiments and demonstrations we could show the abilities of our articulated hand and gain a lot of experience in what artificial hands can do, what abilities they need and where their limitations lie. We discuss the achievements and the shortfalls of DLR Hand II in comparison to the human hand and show possible improvements. The physical force of this hand is similar to the power of an average human hand, but the size of the artificial hand is still larger. In order to grasp and manipulate objects typically used by humans it is necessary to further reduce the size. We need new concepts to keep the hand as powerful as DLR Hand II