• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.484-492
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• 2022

This paper presents a simple and robust under-actuated robotic finger mechanism that enables self-adaptive grip, fingertip pinch, and caging grasp functions. In order to perform daily activities using hands, the fingers should be able to perform adaptive gripping and pinching motion, and the caging grasp function is required to realize natural gripping motions and improve grip reliability. However, general commercial prosthetic hands cannot implement all three functions because they use under-actuation mechanism and simple mechanical structure to achieve light-weight and high robustness characteristic. In this paper, new mechanism is proposed that maintains structural simplicity and implements all the three finger functions with simple one degree-of-freedom control through a combination of a four-bar linkage mechanism and a wire-driven mechanism. The basic structure and operating principle of the proposed finger mechanism were explained, and simulation and experiments using the prototype were conducted to verify the gripping performance of the proposed finger mechanism.