Dexterous Hand documentation
Preface
This is the starting point for the Shadow Dexterous Hand Documentation. The Shadow Dexterous Hand is an advanced humanoid robot hand system that provides 24 movements to reproduce as closely as possible the kinematics and dexterity of the human hand. It has been designed to provide comparable force output and movement precision to the human hand. Shadow Hand systems have been used for research in grasping, manipulation, neural control, brain computer interface, industrial quality control, and hazardous material handling.
The Shadow Dexterous Hand is a self-contained system - all actuation and sensing is built into the hand and forearm. All versions of the Hand use an EtherCAT bus (Ethernet for Control Automation Technology), providing a 100Mbps Ethernet-based communications field-bus, and full integration into ROS (Robot Operating System).
The Hands use Shadow’s electric “Smart Motor” actuation system and integrates force and position control electronics, motor drive electronics, motor, gearbox, force sensing and communications into a compact module, 20 of which are packed into the Hand base.