Hands and grippers

Our experience in developing, building and using dexterous robot hands reaches back to 1993. Our work scope covers all areas from multisensory mechatronic hand design up to control of the hands including telemanipulation, autonomous grasping and manipulation. As example the DLR Hand II basing on four identical fingers was rated as one of the most advanced and complex artificial hands in the world at it is introducing in the year 2001. It is the base for the DLR Hit Hand I and II. In the year 2008 we introduced the DLR Hand Arm System David - it is still the most complex mechatronic hand with 38 motors and 19 degree of freedoms in the world. With it size and performance approaching the human archetype it is unique. It mirrors our experience with tendon driven passive compliance systems. Our last development for space is the DEXHAND. It combines the modular hand concept of DLR Hand II with tendon driven fingers to reach fingers sizes of Astronaut gloves and still has the same active fingertip force as DLR Hand II.

Clash

CLASH was designed during the EU project Soma in order to grasp safely and reliably fruits and vegetables. It is a compliant, yet low-cost hand.

David-Hand

Robot hands are normally first in contact with the environment and should withstand hard contacts. Variable compliance systems as realized in Hand-Arm-System can handle impacts and store energy for periods of time.

Hand II

DLR Hand II is a reliable, flexible and powerful multisensory hand – on Rollin Justin – combined with the lightweight arms it is an excellent platform for two hand manipulation.

DLR-HIT Hand II

The DLR-HIT Hand II is used as a tool on Space Justin for telemanipulation. The human operator can perform a lot of manipulation task with this robot hand. To support the operator new methods of shared autonomy are proved.

Hybrid Compliant Gripper

HCG is the hybrid two-finger evolution of CLASH. Interchangeable suction cups and an interchangeable fingertip allow a greater number of different objects to be gripped more easily.

MICA

The MICA is a versatile instrument for minimally invasive robotic surgery. Being a 3DoF-robot, it is attached to the MIRO arm and extends the kinematic chain by three joints. In 2010 the MICA was presented to the public for the first time.

Spacehand (2015–2018)

The Spacehand is a space qualified robotic hand, designed for long term operation in Geosynchronous Orbit. It is the further development of the DLR DEXHAND. The Spacehand is currently part of the Phoenix mission led by the DARPA and targets a flight in the vicinity of 2020.

DEXHAND (2012–2015)

The experiences of the DLR Hand II and David allowed us to develop a space qualified Hand for the ESA. Built to withstand the harsh environment in space it could help to repair defect satellites.

DLR Hand I (1998)

The DLR Hand I was the immediate predecessor of the DLR Hand II. Each finger shows up a 2-dof cardanic base joint realized by special designed linear actuators (artificial muscles) and a third actuator of this type integrated into the bottom finger link, thus, actuating the second link actively and, by elaborate coupling via a spring, the third link passively. The anthropromorphic fingertips are of crucial importance for grasping and manipulation, thus they are modular and easily exchangeable with specially adapted versions. Following our mechatronic design principles, literally every millimeter in the fingers is occupied by sensing, actuation and electronic preprocessing technology.

DLR/HIT Hand

Based on DLR Hand II HIT (Harbin Institute of Technology) and DLR developed a multisensory robot hand.

ROTEX (1988–1993)

ROTEX (Robot Technology Experiment on Spacelab D2-Mission) was kind of a starting shot for Germany’s participation in space automation and robotics. It contained as much sensor-based on-board autonomy as possible, but on the other side it presumed that for many years cooperation between man and machine, based on powerful telerobotic structures, will be the foundation of high-performance space robot systems, operable especially from ground.