Design, fabrication and preliminary results of a novel anthropomorphic hand for humanoid robotics: RCH-1

TLDR

Robot technology is expected to address demographic challenges such as declining birth rates and an aging population, especially in Japan, and human hands are crucial for communication due to their grasping, sensing, and emotional expression abilities. The goal is to develop a personal robot capable of natural human communication by expressing human‑like emotion, achieved through the creation of an anthropomorphic hand. The authors designed, fabricated, and integrated the RCH‑1 anthropomorphic hand into the WE‑4RII humanoid platform. The collaboration between Waseda University, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, and ROBOCASA yielded preliminary results demonstrating the hand’s functionality.

Abstract

Among social infrastructure technologies, robot technology (RT) is expected to play an important role in solving the problems of both decrease of birth rate and increase of elderly people in the 21st century, specially but not only in Japan. In order to achieve this objective, the new generation of personal robots should be capable of a natural communication with humans by expressing human-like emotion. In this sense, human hands play a fundamental role in communication, because they have grasping, sensing and emotional expression ability. This paper presents the recent results of the collaboration between the Takanishi Lab of Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, and the Arts Lab of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy, and ROBOCASA. In this paper, the development of a novel anthropomorphic hand for humanoid robotics RCH-1 (ROBOCASA Hand No.1) and its integration into a humanoid robotic platform, named WE-4RII (Waseda Eye No.4 Refined II) is presented.