Control of the Utah/MIT Dextrous Hand: Hardware and Software Hierarchy.

The Utah/MIT Dextrous Hand (UMDH) is a four fingered, sixteen degree of freedom robotic hand, built for research in the area of advanced robotic manipulation. The hand is actuated by thirty-two pneumatic pistons, pulling antagonistic flexor and extensor tendons at each joint. The hand contains integrated sensors for the transduction of position at the joints and tension in the tendons. This paper describes a hardware and software hierarchy developed to control manipulation with the UMDH. Control algorithms execute within a multiprocessing, shared memory computer environment, partitioned into a three tiered hierarchy. Position servo algorithms are executed at the lowest level, trajectory generation and communication at the middle level and at the highest level, a new programming language, HPL (Hand Programming Language) is implemented, providing an abstraction of manipulation tasks to the user.