QBSOFTHAND RESEARCH USER MANUAL —
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4 Description
4.1 General
qb SoftHand Research is an anthropomorphic robotic hand based on soft-robotics technology. It is
flexible, adaptable and able to interact with the surrounding environment, objects, or even humans while
limiting the risk of injuring operators, spoiling products, or damaging the robot itself.
Thanks to its soft nature the SoftHand by qbrobotics exploits the principles of synergies in an intrinsically
intelligent design that is not only safe w.r.t. unexpected human-robot interaction, but also adaptable to
grasp different shaped objects without any change in the control action
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i.e. showing an unparalleled
level of simplicity and flexibility.
The combination of these innovations results in a flexible prehensile device that can grasp a wide variety
of objects. The single-motor actuation makes the hand plug-and-play, simple to control (one single motor
requires one single control signal to either close or open the whole hand), and affordable.
The custom-made electronic board inside the qb SoftHand Research is composed of a logic stage for
communication and low-level computation, and a power stage for motion control. This, together with a
DC motor and its absolute encoder, establishes a simple position and current control feedback regulated
by a properly tuned PID controller.
The qb SoftHand is generally shipped with a qb Adapter Board equipped with a 3 meter-length cable.
The qb SoftHand Research does not use Common Industrial Protocols (CIP) or other industrial standards
for I/O communication due to historical design and technical reasons.
I/O data basically refers as measurements from the device, commands to the device, and parameters
from/to the device. These are handled in a custom package format as follows
2-byte — common preamble;
1-byte — target slave id;
1-byte — payload length;
n-byte — payload;
1-byte — checksum for communication integrity.
A custom-made single-master-multiple-slave (SMMS) serial communication protocol is implemented to:
send commands to the connected devices;
read measurements from the connected devices (motor position and/or current);
get and set configuration parameters.
4.2 Characteristics and key features
Flexibility, adaptivity and robustness thanks to the soft-robotics design;
19 anthropomorphic DOFs controlled in one single synergy motion;
