Proposal for Robot Hand and Forearm Design to Reproduce Human-to-human Physical Contact

Abstract

If a robot can reproduce human-to-human physical contact, it may be used to relieve humans’ stress for example. In our previous work, we made a prototype of an artificial hand aiming to reproduce human-to-human physical contact. It has both active touch functions and passive touch reproducibility. And, we conducted participant experiments for "human-like touch feel" evaluation and control experiments. We designed the temperature system, which the 1st prototype didn’t have, keeping the elements of the 1st prototype that were evaluated "human-like" at the previous participant experiment. And aiming at reproducing communication, we added sensors to feel the other person (we referred to the result of the control experiment). We also designed the artificial forearm with the aim of moving the hand actively. We made the above designs, the 2nd prototype, and tested whether the design worked well.