Capable of manipulating objects and tools by simulating human finger movements and structures
Designed to move independently with 4 fingers and 16 joints

The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials has developed a human-sized robotic hand that can manipulate objects and tools in everyday life, such as picking up eggs or cutting with scissors.

It is manufactured with a universal structure, so it can be mounted on various robot arms, and its gripping force relative to its weight is at the world's highest level, so it is expected to be used in industrial sites as well as in everyday life.
The research team led by Dr. Do Hyeon-min of the Robotics and Mechatronics Laboratory at the Advanced Production Equipment Research Center of the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials announced that they have developed a humanoid robot hand that manipulates objects in the same way by imitating the movements and structure of human fingers.

The humanoid robotic hand consists of four fingers and 16 joints, and 12 motors are used to move them in all directions. Each finger is designed to move independently.

Additionally, we developed and applied a mechanism that allows the fingers to move with multiple degrees of freedom even in narrow spaces, allowing them to move at a level similar to that of a human hand. The actuator that moves the fingers was modularized by mounting it inside the palm, and the design was made so that the robot hand can be mounted without changing the existing robot arm structure.
The newly developed robotic hand is lighter and stronger than existing commercially available robotic hands. The humanoid robotic hand weighs less than 1 kg but can lift objects weighing over 3 kg.

To provide tactile sensing capabilities for detecting contact with objects, the research team developed force-measuring sensors and installed them on the fingertips, joints, and fingers. The force sensors mounted on the fingertips are ultra-small, measuring 15 mm in diameter and weighing less than 5 g. They can measure the magnitude and direction of force detected at the fingertips when the robotic hand makes contact with an object. The core of robotic hand technology lies in controlling the gripping force.

The finger joints and palm are equipped with skin-type tactile sensors developed through joint research with Seoul National University. A skin-type tactile sensor can measure the distribution and force of the contact area when a robotic hand comes into contact with an object.
Do Hyun-min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, said, “Humanoid robot hands were developed to mimic the delicate movements of the human hand and handle objects such as tools that we use in our daily lives.” He added, “Commercial robot hands developed so far have had limitations in their utility because there were no modular products that had built-in tactile sensors and finger actuators mounted inside the palm. However, we expect that the robot hand developed this time will be able to perform platform development such as research on algorithms and robot manipulation intelligence.”

Meanwhile, this study was conducted as part of a project to develop robot task control technology capable of grasping and manipulating various objects in everyday life environments and performing tool-utilizing tasks based on multimodal recognition, led by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.