Development of a low pressure driven pneumatic actuator and its application to a robot hand

This paper presents a non-metallic and light robot hand that uses balloon-type pneumatic actuators that we developed. Recently, there has been a lot of research into robot coexisting with people and helping them. Such robots must be proven safe for contact with people. The drive system of our proposed robot hand uses balloon-type pneumatic actuators that we originally developed in consideration of the safety measures required for human contact. The results of test on the characteristics of the pneumatic actuator proved that it is possible to drive a robot hand and create enough generated force to grasp objects using lower inner pressure and lower air volume. Moreover, a model the same size as a human hand can be made without a big air compressor, we also consider the applications of such prosthetic hands