MS Mechanical Sciences MS Mech. Sci. 2191-916X Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/ms-2-9-2011 Design and performance assessment of an underactuated hand for industrial applications Meijneke C. 1 Kragten G. A. 1 Wisse M. 1 Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering, Dept. of BioMechanical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 2, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands 08 02 2011 2 1 9 15 Copyright: © 2011 C. Meijneke et al. 2011 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://ms.copernicus.org/articles/2/9/2011/ms-2-9-2011.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://ms.copernicus.org/articles/2/9/2011/ms-2-9-2011.pdf

The Delft Hand 2 (DH-2) is an underactuated robot hand meant for industrial applications, having six degrees of freedom (DoF), one actuator (DoA) and no sensors. It was designed to provide a cheap and robust hand to grasp a large range of objects without damaging them. The goal of this paper is to assess the design and performance of the DH-2, demonstrating how the design was optimized for its intended application area and how the hand was simplified to make it commercially attractive. Performance tests show that the DH-2 has a payload of 2 kg for an object range of 60 to 120 mm, it can close or open within 0.5 s, and it only uses open-loop control by means of the input voltage of the motor. The results demonstrate that the industrial need of a simple, cheap and effective robotic hand can be achieved with the principle of underactuation and the use of conventional components. <br><br> <i>This paper was presented at the IFToMM/ASME International Workshop on Underactuated Grasping (UG2010), 19 August 2010, Montréal, Canada.</i>

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