Design of an Adaptive Modular Anthropomorphic Dexterous Hand for Human-like Manipulation

Abstract

Biological synergies have emerged as a widely adopted paradigm for dexterous hand design, enabling human-like manipulation with a small number of actuators. Nonetheless, excessive coupling tends to diminish the dexterity of hands. This paper tackles the trade-off between actuation complexity and dexterity by proposing an anthropomorphic finger topology with 4 DoFs driven by 2 actuators, and by developing an adaptive, modular dexterous hand based on this finger topology. We explore the biological basis of hand synergies and human gesture analysis, translating joint-level coordination and structural attributes into a modular finger architecture. Leveraging these biomimetic mappings, we design a five-finger modular hand and establish its kinematic model to analyze adaptive grasping and in-hand manipulation. Finally, we construct a physical prototype and conduct preliminary experiments, which validate the effectiveness of the proposed design and analysis.