The Analysis of High-speed Catching with a Multifingered Robot Hand

A new multifingered hand system with quick finger motion of 180deg per 0.1s has been developed. With high-speed visual feedback at a rate of 1kHz, high-speed catching of a falling ball are achieved. In this catching task, a target was dropped from about 1m in height, and the speed of the falling ball became more than about 4m/s just before it hit the ground. The hand could precisely catch it using two fingertips, and the percentage of the success was almost 100%. This successful catching depends on not only high-speed precise motion of the hand, but also softness of the target surface. In this paper, the dynamical analysis of the high-speed catching is proposed, and the softness of the target surface makes very important roles in this tasks. As a result it is shown that the balanced impedance of the target surface and the feedback control of the hand is needed in order to achieve stable catching.