Elastic Model of Deformable Fingertip for Soft-Fingered Manipulation

We propose a straightforward static elastic model of a hemispherical soft fingertip undergoing large contact deformation, as occurs when robotic hands with the fingertips handle and manipulate objects, which is suitable for the analysis of soft-fingered manipulation because of the simple form of the model. We focus on formulating elastic force and potential energy equations for the deformation of the fingers which are represented as an infinite number of virtual springs standing vertically. The equations are functions of two variables: the maximum displacement of the hemispherical fingertip and the orientation angle of a contacting planar object. The elastic potential energy has a local minimum in our model. The elastic model was validated by comparison with results of a compression test of the hemispherical soft fingertip