• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.205-212
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• 2009

This paper proposes a biomimetic hand prosthesis with tendon-driven five fingers. Each finger is composed of a distal-middle phalange, a proximal phalange and a metacarpal bone, which are connected to a link mechanism. The finger flexion is a resultant motion by pulling a wire to serve as a tendon, but the finger extension is performed by an elastic mechanism composed of a restoration spring. The designed hand prosthesis with tendon-driven five fingers has totally six degrees of freedom. But its weight is merely 400.73g. The hand can perform various hand functions such as the grasping and the hand postures. From experimental results, we show that the proposed hand prosthesis is useful to amputees as a prosthetic hand.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.55-71
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• 2015

This paper presents a novel harmony search (HS)-based data-driven single input rule modules (SIRMs)-connected fuzzy inference system (FIS) for the prediction of stress in externally prestressed tendon. The proposed method attempts to extract causal relationship of a system from an input-output pairs of data even without knowing the complete physical knowledge of the system. The monotonicity property is then exploited as an additional qualitative information to obtain a meaningful SIRMs-connected FIS model. This method is then validated using results from test data of the literature. Several parameters, such as initial tendon depth to beam ratio; deviators spacing to the initial tendon depth ratio; and distance of a concentrated load from the nearest support to the effective beam span are considered. A computer simulation for estimating the stress increase in externally prestressed tendon, ${\Delta}f_{ps}$, is then reported. The contributions of this paper is two folds; (i) it contributes towards a new monotonicity-preserving data-driven FIS model in fuzzy modeling and (ii) it provides a novel solution for estimating the ${\Delta}f_{ps}$ even without a complete physical knowledge of unbonded tendons.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2013.05a
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• pp.327-328
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• 2013

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.36 no.11
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• pp.1405-1411
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• 2012

Remote handling manipulators are widely used for performing hazardous tasks, and it is essential to ensure the reliable performance of such systems. Toward this end, tendon-driven mechanisms are adopted in such systems to reduce the weight of the distal parts of the manipulator while maintaining the handling performance. In this study, several approaches for the design of a gripper system for a tendon-driven remote handling system are introduced. Basically, this gripper has an underactuated spring mechanism that is combined with a slave manipulator triggered by a master operator. Based on the requirements under the specified tendon-driven mechanism, the connecting position of the spring system on the gripper mechanism and kinematic influence coefficient (KIC) analysis are performed. As a result, a suitable combination of components for the proper design of the target system is presented and verified.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.190-196
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• 2020

Mechanical systems using tendon-driven actuators have been widely used for bionic robot arms because not only the tendon based actuating system enables the design of robot arm to be very efficient, but also the system is very similar to the mechanism of the human body's operation. The tendon-driven actuator, however, has a drawback caused by the friction force of the sheath. Controlling the system without considering the friction force between the sheath and the tendon could result in a failure to achieve the desired dynamic behaviors. In this study, a mathematical model was introduced to determine the friction force that is changed according to the geometrical pathway of the tendon-sheath, and the model parameters for the friction model were estimated by analyzing the data obtained from dedicated tests designed for evaluating the friction forces. Based on the results, it is possible to appropriately predict the friction force by using the information on the pathway of the tendon.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.258-263
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• 2014

An adaptive robot hand (AR-Hand) has a stable grasp of different objects in unstructured environments. In this study, we propose an AR-Hand based on a tendon-driven mechanism which consists of 4 fingers and 12 DOFs. It weighs 0.5 kg and can grasp an object up to 1 kg. This hand based on the adaptive grasp mechanism is able to provide a stable grasp without a complex control algorithm or sensor system. The fingers are driven by simple tendon structures with each finger capable of adaptively grasping the objects. This paper presents a method to decide the joint stiffness. The adaptive grasping is verified by various grasping experiments involving objects with different shapes and sizes.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.10
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• pp.1039-1046
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• 2009

In this work, a bilateral control for a master-slave manipulator system which will be used for handling objects contaminated by radioactivity has been addressed. The links of manipulators are driven independently by individual motors installed on the base and the driving torque is transmitted through pre-tensioned tendons. The measurable variables are the positions and rates of master/slave motors. In the consideration of the flexibility of the tendon and available measurements for control, we proposed an optimal static output feedback control for possible bilateral control architecture. By using modal analysis, the system model is reduced to guarantee the detectability which is a necessity for the static output feedback control design. Based on the reduced model, the control gains are determined to attenuate vibration in the sense of optimality. The feasibility of the proposed control design was verified along with some simulation results.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.1043-1052
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• 2009

In this work, a master-slave manipulator system which will be used for handling objects contaminated by radioactivity has been addressed. The links of manipulators are driven independently by individual motors installed on the base and the driving torque is transmitted through pre-tensioned tendons. Since the measurable variables are the positions and rates of master/slave motors, only a constrained specific bilateral control structure is available. In the consideration of the flexibility of the tendon and constrained control structure, we derived a necessity for tendon design to prevent uncontrollable vibration mode through a modal analysis. Based on a reduced rigid body model, a control design was suggested and tendons were selected. The feasibility of the proposed analysis and tendon design were verified along with some simulation results.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2001.07a
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• pp.183-188
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• 2001

In this paper, we have developed a new Force-Display system using tendon-driven method based multiple DC motors. The proposed system is based on the HIR Lab Haptic library, which calculates the real position and renders the reflecting force data to device rapidly. The system is composed of device based tendon- driving method, high-speed controller and Haptic rendering library. The developed system will be used on constructing the dynamical virtual environment. To show the efficiency of our system, we designed simulation program, which an display the moving force (attaching, grabbing, rotating) on two virtual points. As the result of the experiment, our proposed system shows much higher resolution than any others.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.51-57
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• 2011

The lightweight and compact actuator with high power is required to perform motion with multiple degrees of freedom. To reduce the size and inertia of a robot manipulator, the mechanical transmission system is used. The shape memory alloy(SMA) is similar to the muscle-tendon-bone network of a human hand. However, there are some drawback and nonlinearity, such as the hysteresis and the stress dependence. In this paper, the design of the underactuated robot hand is studied. The 3-finger dexterous hand is driven by the SMA actuator using segmental mechanism. This digital approach enables to overcome the nonlinearity of SMA wire. The translational displacement of SMA actuator required to bend a phalanx of the underactuated robot hand is estimated and the bending angle of the underactuated robot hand according to input displacement of SMA actuator is predicted by the multi-body dynamic analysis.