CAN in five-finger robot-hand

Source: CAN Newsletter June 2009

Based on the technique of DLR-Hand II, HIT (Harbin Institute of Technology in China) and DLR (German Aerospace Center) department for robotics and mechatronics developed a smaller, multi-sensor robot-hand called DLR-HIT-Hand II. The robot-hand features five fingers with four finger joints each. Each finger has three degrees of freedom: It may be moved forward and backward (1^st joint), to the left and right (2^nd joint) and be extracted/retracted (3^rd and 4^th joints). The available on the market brushless DC motors with analog Hall sensors (for commutation) are used as drives. The motors are integrated in the fingers and in the carpus (wrist) of the hand. Each joint is equipped with an angle sensor and a strain gauge-based torque sensor.
The complete hand is controlled via a signal-processor, previously mounted on a PCI plug-in card. Using optimized control functions and more powerful signal-processors, it is now possible to embed the complete control on a PCB (printed circuit board) into the hand. Therewith the amount of communicated data was reduced and interconnection of devices via CAN was realized in a prototype solution.
Several institutes worldwide required development of the five-finger hand. With the new hand an important impulse shall be given for the service-robotics applications – one of the most important future markets.