Mechanical Design and Drive Control of a Novel Dexterous Hand for On-Orbit Servicing

In order to meet the requirements of on-orbit servicing outside the cabin, a flexible, dexterous hand with easy grasping ability and strong loading capacity is designed. The dexterous hand is comprised of three fingers. Each finger is driven by a set of four linkages. Furthermore, two fingers have a set of axial rotational degrees of freedom. In order to achieve the position control and keep griping stability, the dexterous hand adopts a mechanism of hybrid force/position control. In the end, experimental results demonstrates that the on-orbit servicing dexterous hand has great adaptability and operational capability.