The present invention relates to a robot hand capable of a stable grasping action, irrespective of the shape of an object to be grasped, and improved in flexibility and adaptability to circumstances.
Some conventionally used robots are provided with two or three fingers at a robot hand section attached to the distal end of a robot arm. Generally, according to the robots of this type, an object to be grasped is positioned in the central portion of the robot arm and is grasped by the fingers rocked correspondingly. In this case, the degree of freedom of the robots is 1.
In the robot hands where the degree of freedom is "1", however, it is necessary to adapt the shapes of the fingers to that of the object. Otherwise, the shape of the object needs to be adjusted to those of the robot fingers. In handling objects of various shapes by such a conventional robot, therefore, the robot hand or fingers must be replaced with every object change, thus complicating the operation.
In order to eliminate such awkwardness, robot hands are proposed in which the individual fingers are varied in rocking directions to change and adjust their configurations to the object to be grasped, thereby improving the stability of the grasping action. However, these robot hands lack in adaptability to circumstances and in flexibility to vary with the posture or position of the grasped object. Such flexibility and adaptability require an increase in the degree of freedom. Thus, the robot hand section would become more complicated in structure and larger in size.