A new ultralight anthropomorphic hand

In this paper a very lightweight artificial hand is presented that approximates the manipulation abilities of a human hand very well. A large variety of different objects can be grasped reliably and the movements of the hand appear to be very natural. This five finger hand has 13 independent degrees of freedom driven by a new type of powerful small size flexible fluidic actuator. The actuators are completely integrated in the fingers which made possible the design of a very compact and lightweight hand that can either be used as a prosthetic hand or as a humanoid robot hand. A mathematical model for the expansion of a flexible fluidic actuator is given and the mechanical construction and features of the new anthropomorphic hand are illustrated.