A Compliant and Robust Robotic Hand Fabricated with 3D Printed Soft Materials

This work presents design and prototype of CORA hand (COmpliant Robotic hAnd) a novel robotic hand conceived for compliance and robustness in grasping tasks, and for easy manufacturing and maintenance. It takes advantage of novel soft-polymer printable filaments to obtain intrinsic compliance during grasping and accidental contacts. All manufactured parts are designed and optimized for conventional 3D printers, and additional implemented components are selected among standardized, off-the-shelf mechanical parts. Design of the hand considers easy accessibility of components to simplify maintenance and replacements. In this paper design of the hand is presented, focusing on specific solutions adopted for improving robustness of the final 3D printed parts and for obtaining compliance during interaction with the environment. Design of the soft-polymer links has been evaluated with FEM simulation. A preliminary prototype of the robotic hand was built and evaluated in basic grasping poses of different objects.