Soft Hands for Grasping and Manipulation

This chapter focuses on soft robotic hands. Soft hands composed of or involving soft materials exhibit adaptability and flexibility in object grasping and manipulation. First, we show how soft hands relax contact forces during grasping. Principles of soft robotic hands are then described to categorize the soft hands into soft pad hands, suction hands, jamming hands, bending finger hands, expanding membrane hands, and remotely deformed hands, with mechanics of soft hands. Analytical model for a soft pad hands and computational models for a bending finger hand and an expanding membrane hand are introduced. Soft robotic hands can grasp delicate and flexible food items, suggesting the soft hands are applicable to food manipulation. Thus, applications of soft robotic hands to food manipulation are described, focusing on tailored design of soft robotic hands for various food items. Soft sensors for soft robotic hands are then described, starting from their principles, including resistive, capacitive, and magnetic sensing, to entropy reduction in soft tactile sensing.