Adaptive Synergies: an approach to the design of under-actuated robotic hands

To match the richness and complexity of the sensory and motor functionalities of a human hand with a robust and economically reasonable robotic device remains one of the hardest challenges in the field. Previous work has explored the possibility to exploit insight from neuroscientific results on postural correlation patterns (synergies) taming the sensorimotor complexity of hands. The postural synergy model has been recently extended to account for grasp force control through a model of ”soft synergies” which incorporate hand compliance. In this paper we propose a first translation of such principles in the design of a robot hand. It so turns out that the implementation of the soft synergy model in an effective design is not obvious. The solution proposed in this paper rests on ideas coming from under-actuated hand design. We give a synthesis method to realize a desired set of soft synergies through the principled design of adaptive under-actuated mechanisms, which we call the method of adaptive synergies. This approach leads to the design and implementation of a prototype modular hand capable of accommodating an arbitrary number of synergies. The effectiveness of the design is shown in grasping simulations and experiments.