Humans use all surfaces of the hand for contact-rich manipulation. Robot hands, in contrast, typically use only the fingertips, which can limit dexterity. In this work, we leveraged a potential energy–based whole-hand manipulation model, which does not depend on contact wrench modeling like traditional approaches, to design a robotic manipulator. Inspired by robotic caging grasps and the high levels of dexterity observed in human manipulation, a metric was developed and used in conjunction with the manipulation model to design a two-fingered dexterous hand, the Model W. This was accomplished by simulating all planar finger topologies composed of open kinematic chains of up to three serial revolute and prismatic joints, forming symmetric two-fingered hands, and evaluating their performance according to the metric. We present the best design, an unconventional robot hand capable of performing continuous object reorientation, as well as repeatedly alternating between power and pinch grasps—two contact-rich skills that have often eluded robotic hands—and we experimentally characterize the hand’s manipulation capability. This hand realizes manipulation motions reminiscent of thumb–index finger manipulative movement in humans, and its topology provides the foundation for a general-purpose dexterous robot hand.

人类使用手的所有表面进行接触丰富的操作。相比之下，机器人手通常只使用指尖，这会限制灵活性。在这项工作中，我们利用基于势能的全手操纵模型来设计机器人操纵器，该模型不像传统方法那样依赖于接触扳手建模。受机器人笼式抓取和人类操作中观察到的高度灵巧性的启发，开发了一种度量标准，并与操作模型结合使用以设计双指灵巧手模型 W。这是通过模拟所有平面手指拓扑结构来实现的由最多三个串联旋转和棱柱关节的开放运动链组成，形成对称的两指手，并根据公制评估它们的性能。我们呈现最好的设计，一个非常规的机械手，能够执行连续的物体重新定向，以及在强力和捏手之间反复交替——这两种接触丰富的技能通常是机械手所无法做到的——我们通过实验表征了手的操纵能力。这只手实现了让人联想到人类拇指-食指的操纵运动，其拓扑结构为通用灵巧机器人手提供了基础。