A Methodological Approach to Design of Soft Fingertips for Humanoid Robot Hands

This paper first describes the general lines of a methodological approach to design of soft fingers for humanoid robot hands. The method takes into consideration both functional aspects (related to grasp robustness and stability) and reliability aspects (as resistance to wear and tear, manufacturability, structural integratability, etc.). Then, some experimental results related to the evaluation of functional indexes are presented and discussed. Experiments have been performed on fingertips made of an inner rigid core covered by a soft layer, in order to simulate the behaviour of biological tissues covering an endo-skeletal structure. Effects of variables like thickness and hardness of material of the compliant layer have been investigated under different load conditions, to study their influence on the performance indexes.