TY - JOUR
T1 - Simulation software for the Utah/MIT dextrous hand
AU - Perlin, Kenneth
AU - Demmel, James W.
AU - Wright, Paul K.
N1 - Funding Information:
1. INTRODUCTION The research field of dextrous manipulation is now being strongly influenced by the availability of the Utah/MIT hand which has been manufactured in limited quantities and is now being set-up for use in several laboratories around the country. The hand is a 16-degree-of-freedom, tendon-operated device, driven pneumatically. Detailed descriptions of the architectural characteristics of the hand and its control methods are described elsewhere. 1'2 The current activities of the other Utah/MIT hand investigators include further developments in the control methods, the design of tactile sensors that will be fitted to the fingertips, and the development of programming methods for hand operation. Two other laboratories Acknowledgement--Work on this paper has been supported by Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-87-K-0129, National Science Foundation CER Grant DCR-8320085, and National Science Foundation Grant DMC 860-2847 and by Grants from the Digital Equipment Corporation and the IBM Corporation. We would like to thank the following colleagues in the Courant Institute's Robotics Research Laboratory for their assistance with the experiments and simulations: G. Lafferriere, F.B. Hansen, D. Clark and E. Fernandez.
PY - 1989
Y1 - 1989
N2 - The Utah/MIT dextrous hand is a 16-joint, four-finger manipulator that is being set-up in our laboratory for concept demonstrations of light assembly and repair tasks. In this paper, we describe a variety of simulation methods that graphically portray the grasps and tasks that the dextrous hand will subsequently carry out in practice. The first series of simulations have followed on from a taxonomy of human hand grasps. This human hand taxonomy shows how grasps can be divided into two basic types, namely power and precision. Since the Utah/MIT dextrous hand is architecturally different from the human hand, the first task has been to generate, in a computer graphic format, an equivalent taxonomy for the Utah/MIT hand. This has involved the development of a "modeler" that not only gives a graphic representation of the complex structure but also provides for realistic rendering, contact information and (with simpler rendering) real time animations of dextrous manipulations. Thus, it is emphasized that the modeler can show various simulations: the static taxonomy for the Utah/MIT hand; the dynamic joint movements; and interactions with objects of varying size. The spatial relationships between the hand and any arbitrary object can be simulated in order to check, for example, that the hand can geometrically bound and close upon the object. Programming tools for the dextrous hand are also discussed in the paper, in particular a sensor-based dataglove. When a human wears the instrumented glove, gesticulations can be stored for subsequent programming of the Utah/MIT hand. Since the architectures of human hand/glove and the Utah/MIT hand are different, this involves cross calibration and conversions between the two media.
AB - The Utah/MIT dextrous hand is a 16-joint, four-finger manipulator that is being set-up in our laboratory for concept demonstrations of light assembly and repair tasks. In this paper, we describe a variety of simulation methods that graphically portray the grasps and tasks that the dextrous hand will subsequently carry out in practice. The first series of simulations have followed on from a taxonomy of human hand grasps. This human hand taxonomy shows how grasps can be divided into two basic types, namely power and precision. Since the Utah/MIT dextrous hand is architecturally different from the human hand, the first task has been to generate, in a computer graphic format, an equivalent taxonomy for the Utah/MIT hand. This has involved the development of a "modeler" that not only gives a graphic representation of the complex structure but also provides for realistic rendering, contact information and (with simpler rendering) real time animations of dextrous manipulations. Thus, it is emphasized that the modeler can show various simulations: the static taxonomy for the Utah/MIT hand; the dynamic joint movements; and interactions with objects of varying size. The spatial relationships between the hand and any arbitrary object can be simulated in order to check, for example, that the hand can geometrically bound and close upon the object. Programming tools for the dextrous hand are also discussed in the paper, in particular a sensor-based dataglove. When a human wears the instrumented glove, gesticulations can be stored for subsequent programming of the Utah/MIT hand. Since the architectures of human hand/glove and the Utah/MIT hand are different, this involves cross calibration and conversions between the two media.
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U2 - 10.1016/0736-5845(89)90002-1
DO - 10.1016/0736-5845(89)90002-1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0024936829
SN - 0736-5845
VL - 5
SP - 281
EP - 292
JO - Robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing
JF - Robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing
IS - 4
ER -