Morpheus Hand: Actively-Controlled Finger Arrangement for Soft Robotic Manipulation

Abstract

As robots enter the real world, there is a need for robotic hands that can dexterously manipulate a wide variety of items regardless of shape or size. Current robotic solutions can use different finger arrangements but do not utilize the benefits of soft robotics, specifically high levels of compliance, ease of control, and robustness to imprecise grasps. This work focuses on developing a soft robotic hand with the ability to actively change finger arrangements based on item geometry. In addition to a soft robotic hand with a new degree-of-freedom, a robotic grasping pipeline is presented that uses pre-defined item geometric characteristics to make the best finger arrangement choice for an arbitrary item. This novel hand is evaluated on its ability to be accurate for any arrangement within a continuous arrangement space as well as its ability to transition quickly to match industry standard pick rates. Overall, the soft robotic hand solution presented in this work enhances grasping capabilities over a large, geometrically-diverse item set, and paves the way for future research in soft manipulation.