A versatile toolbox for studying anthropomorphic robot hands

Recent efforts to develop virtual environments for the study of robot hands and grasping have been limited. The general approach to modeling the hand has overlooked many fundamental aspects that relate to the mechanical design of robot hand prototypes. In particular, resulting motions of hands due to tendon action have not been simulated in any existing virtual environment, to our knowledge. Furthermore, existing simulation environments do not incorporate generalized low-level control architectures for such complex mechanisms. In response to these needs, we present the ongoing development of our toolbox with the aim of providing a sufficient number of tools for modeling and simulating tendon-driven anthropomorphic hand mechanisms.