Mechanical Intelligence for Prehensile In-Hand Manipulation of Spatial Trajectories.

The application of mechanical and other physical properties to the development of robotic systems that can easily adapt to changing external situations is known as mechanical intelligence. Following this concept, many robot hand designs can produce self-adaptive and versatile grasps with simple underactuated fingers and open-loop control, while mechanical-intelligent strategies for dexterous manipulation are still limited. This paper proposes a mechanical-intelligent technique to facilitate dexterous manipulation, in particular prehensile in-hand manipulation. The proposed strategy is based on the generation of complex spatial trajectories of the hand-object system, controlled in open loop with the minimum number of actuators and using simple low-level non-position modes. This approach is exemplified by the rigorous analysis and testing of a three-fingered two-actuator underactuated robot hand, called the helical hand, which is capable of generating helical prehensile in-hand manipulation of diversiform objects under error tolerance controlled by constant speed algorithm.