Grasping with PneuHand II

To interact with people in a human-centered environment a robot must exhibit intelligent behavior. This requires that the robot possess the ability to adapt its actions to changing environmental conditions. A robot estimates these conditions through sensing; therefore, intelligent behavior requires the ability to coordinate actions with the responses of sensors. That is, intelligent behavior requires sensory motor coordination (SMC). SMC is especially important in dexterous manipulation, which requires articulated arms and end-effectors. To test SMC related hypotheses, researchers at Vanderbilt University developed a simple pneumatic hand, which is described in this paper.