Virtual Model for a Multi-finger Robot Hand Design

A robot hand with 10 actuators and 14 joints are developed using the virtual prototyping approach. The control system of the robot hand is a distributed control system with 10 servo control nodes connected by an I2C network. A virtual model based on the 3D model from the mechanical design is extended to include the dynamics behaviors of control software and the motor drive systems to provide a platform to predict the performance of the robot hand before production. After finalize the software and hardware design, the same model is used to rapid prototyping the mechanical components and also for embedded system code generation at the implementation phase. With the addition of man-machine GUI interface and the communication protocol, this same virtual model is adopted again to provide an off-line simulation tool and an intuitive control interface for the fingers motion planning.