Introduction: Arduino Robotic Hand With Haptic Feedback
This year for science fair, I did an engineering project with the goal of creating a system to provide haptic feedback from a robotic hand. The robotic hand is controlled by flex resistors on a glove worn on someone's hand, and an Arduino converts finger positions on the glove to finger positions on the robotic hand. Each of the fingertips of the robotic hand have their own force sensitive resistors(FSR) to gather information about pressure at each fingertip, and another Arduino converts the pressures to pulses for vibrator motors located on the fingers of the control gloves. I used two separate Arduinos since they only have 6 analog inputs each, and I needed 8. It also helped simplify the code a bit, since I used one Arduino for controlling the finger positions and the other for controlling the motor pulses. Also, I already had the two Arduinos, so I used them instead of buying an Arduino Mega or multiplexers. Anyway, the pressure readings are taken once every second, and the motors are on for a portion of each second depending on the pressure measurements. This means that the system is only accurate for a little bit each second, but the measurement intervals could easily be changed in the code.
For the robotic hand, I sketched up a basic design in Autodesk and used the assembler feature to play around with and fine tune some of the finger measurements. Once I had my design ready, I took it to my local hackerspace and got all of the parts laser cut out of an acrylic sheet that was about 5mm in thickness. I bolted all of the finger parts together. As for attaching the fingers to the palm, I scratched the areas where the acrylic overlapped and glued the parts together. The glue worked fine, but if I build another hand, they will be bolted on. There were also a few issues with the placement of holes on the finger segments, but a bit of glue helped anchor the bolts down. To avoid this problem on later designs, I will use smaller bolts and try to cut out as much overlapping material as possible.
For wiring everything together, I found stripped CAT-5 cable rather convenient. It is a little stiff, but it comes out as pre-twisted pairs of wire.
Also, there are only four fingers on the hand since there was only room for four servos on the palm area. To get a thumb in future designs, I will either move one of the robotic fingers to the side and move the sensors around on the glove, or just buy some smaller servos to make everything fit.
In all, the project turned out well and provided a great starting point for future projects. I will eventually come back to this project, and when I do, I will definitely turn it into a step-by-step Instructable.

Participated in the
ShopBot Challenge

Participated in the
Make It Real Challenge

Participated in the
Arduino Challenge
18 Comments
6 years ago
laser cut? seems much easier than inmoov's hand
8 years ago on Introduction
please can you send me the code you used for the second arduino? The one with the vibratory motor and the FSR. bobneuman@gmail.com
Thanks
Reply 8 years ago on Introduction
The code can be found on my full instructable regarding this project:
https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Build-a-Robotic-Hand-with-Haptic-Feedback/step7/Program-the-Hand/
9 years ago on Introduction
What CAD software do you use?
Reply 9 years ago on Introduction
I used Autodesk Inventor for this project. It had a nice simulation feature that allowed me to play with the design and see exactly how the fingers would move before I went about building them.
Reply 9 years ago on Introduction
can you please tell me about the connections you have made
Reply 9 years ago on Introduction
Check out my full instructable on this project for more information:
https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Build-a-Rob...
Reply 9 years ago on Introduction
Neat! How much is it?
Reply 9 years ago on Introduction
Autodesk Inventor is one of the free downloads for students, so I was able to get my copy for free. I do not know how much it is otherwise.
http://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software
Reply 9 years ago on Introduction
That's cool! Thank you for the info.
9 years ago on Introduction
any chance ?? to get the circuit and block diagrams for wiring.. for this cool hand.. !!
9 years ago on Introduction
can u make a video of it in action
10 years ago on Introduction
awesome, this could be used for remote surgery!!, it would provide sensibility to the surgeon.
Keep it up!
Reply 10 years ago on Introduction
Thanks!
11 years ago on Introduction
This is a very interesting project.
Looking forward to your step-by-step
instructable. Well done!
11 years ago on Introduction
Very very cool project! I look forward to seeing what else you build!
Reply 11 years ago on Introduction
Thanks! I will be rebuilding the hand sometime soon, so I will be able to get pictures of the build process and make a step-by-step Instructable.
Reply 11 years ago on Introduction
Thnak you! and yes I am working on something now;)