Design and Testing of an Underactuated Finger with Compliant Elements

A finger mechanism is designed for a prototype construction by 3D printing. The grasping force can be reduced by increasing the number of contact points or by increasing the contact area of each contact point. In this paper, an underactuated 2 DOF finger mechanism is presented using compliant components for an underactuated adaptive grasping. In order to increase the contact area against the object, self-adaptive grasping is designed by an underactuated link mechanism with phalanx plates made of flexible material. Test results show that the designed underactuated finger mechanism automatically distributes the applied forces to the contact points. In addition, the compliance of the contact area further reduced the grasping pressure due to the larger contact area.