Human motion range data optimizes anthropomorphic robotic hand-arm system design

At the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics of the German Aerospace Center (DLR Oberpfaffenhofen), a robotic hand-arm system is being developed, which will consist of a 19 active degree-of-freedom (DoF) hand and a 7 active DoF flexible arm based on antagonistic drive principles. It is targeted to mimic human hand and arm motion as closely as possible, taking kinematic as well as dynamic ranges into account. In the development of such a highly anthropomorphic handarm system, the motion of the human arm plays a key role. While the study of kinematic and dynamic ranges in humans has been done in various sources in literature, none of these are however directly applicable to the developed robotic system. We approached this problem by using RAMSIS data recorded at the Department of Ergonomics at the technical university of Munich. By creating a three-dimensional multi-mode visualisation tool, these data were made available for laying out the dimensions and localisations of the 52 actuators that control the hand-arm system.