Educational-industrial complex development of an anthropomorphic robot hand 'Gifu hand'

It is expected that forthcoming humanoid robots will execute various complicated tasks via communication with a human user. The humanoid robots will be equipped with anthropomorphic multi-fingered hands very like the human hand. We call this a humanoid hand robot. Humanoid hand robots will eventually supplant human labor in the execution of intricate and dangerous tasks in areas such as manufacturing, space, the seabed, etc. Our group, which consists of six members from small manufacturing companies in the Gifu prefecture, Japan and one member from Gifu University, has been developing the Gifu hand, a five-fingered hand driven by built-in servomotors as an educational-industrial complex development since 1996. We aimed to develop the robot hand which is used as the standard platform of the study on dexterous grasping and manipulation of objects.