UBH3: investigating alternative design concepts for robotic hands

This paper describes the general guidelines of the development of humanoid robot hands based on design concepts that consider an endoskeleton made of rigid links connected with elastic hinges, actuated by internally routed tendons and covered by continuous compliant pulps. The project is called UBH3 (University of Bologna Hand, 3rd version) and aims to the development of hands with reduced mechanical complexity yet maintaining full anthropomorphic aspect and a good level of actual dexterity. This paper focuses on mechanical design and makes a synthetic overview of work in progress, preliminary results and open problems