KITECH-Hand: A Highly Dexterous and Modularized Robotic Hand

Abstract

This paper presents an anthropomorphic robotic hand named “KITECH-Hand,” along with its kinematic analysis and detailed mechanical features. From a kinematic perspective, the authors particularly focus on the structure of the metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joints of the fingers. The KITECH-Hand adopts a new “roll-pitch”-type MCP structure to replace conventional “yaw-pitch” structures. The proposed structure provides benefits such as enhanced kinematic performance and ease of the mechanical design. Through the kinematic analysis, it is shown that the KITECH-Hand shows remarkably high dexterity, well surpassing that of existing robotic hands with conventional MCP joints. The unique MCP structure also helps modularize the robot at the joint level, which simplifies its mechanical structure and enables the production cost to be reduced. The performance of the KITECH-Hand, including its dexterity feature, was experimentally verified through a series of experiments, which included object in-hand manipulation and a Cutkosky taxonomy test.