Human anthropomorphic gripper as an automation tool

This paper presents the design, development and implementation of a 14 DOF human anthropomorphic pneumatic gripper as a tool for teaching automation basics using pneumatics and PLCs. The dexterity of the human hand allows several types of power and precision grasps for interacting with various scenarios, these features have inspired the development of robotics mimicking the human hand in applications such as collaborative robotics workcells, where each finger is an actuated mechanism with a specific task. Collaborative actions through pneumatic and PLC programming basics using this hand allows enhancing the user´s knowledge based on concepts and familiarity with the device. The pneumatic hand can be used on site, with the user directly operating it, and offline with a virtual reality tool for offering simultaneous accessible devices when multiple users need the hand. Robotics currently assists training surgical procedures, manipulation of elements in hazardous environments for us, kinematics, dynamics and path planning simulations for various industrial processes, or as didactic tools for inspiring school students for working with robotics. The pneumatic hand system is composed of an actuation, control and teleoperation subsystems, these interact for simulating the muscles, and the user´s inputs for executing the chosen tasks.