A Testbed for The Rapid Prototyping of Tendon Driven Dexterous Fingers with Highly Redundant Sensing

David McDougall, Anthony J. Barcio, Gray C. Thomas, Robert Ambrose

Keywords: Dexterity, Series-elastic, testbed, hand, friction modeling

TL;DR: By incorporating sensing on both sides of a Bowden tube the tension in a cable can be characterized.

Abstract: Inspired by the Robonaut 2 hand architecture and force sensing capabilities. A tendon-driven dexterous robotic finger testbed with Bowden tube routing is presented. In addition to the strain gauge tension measurement from R2, the testbed incorporates a planar rotatory spring for high-fidelity cable tension control. This paper discusses details and design considerations for the testbed, including Bowden tube routing and actuator architecture.

Submission Number: 19