The indirect style under-actuated robotic finger with tendon-slider mechanisms

This paper proposed a novel concept of indirect under-actuation with tendon-slider mechanism. A mechanical finger with the mechanism was designed and integrated into a humanoid robotic hand-TH-2T Hand. The tendon-slider under-actuated finger proves simple but works well. In the design of the finger, the reaction force against a slider in the base segment produced by the grasped object was adopted to make the next segment bend, which relies on a special tendon-slider mechanism. Further, all the five fingers on the TH-2T Hand applies the indirect under-actuated mechanism. Compared with those full-active fingers, the finger and hand designed in this paper have strong self-adaptation to the grasped object; compared with those direct under-actuations, the designed mechanism effectively simplifies the structure, decreases the volume and costs of manufacturing.