Design, Analysis, and Experiment of a Scissor-Shaped Deployable Metamorphic Hand

Abstract It is necessary to innovatively design the dexterity and applicability of end-effector to solve the last centimeter problem of automated production. This paper presents a scissor-shaped deployable metamorphic hand (SDMH). First, a scissor-shaped sub-mechanism module mechanism was designed with three metamorphic configurations. A novel connection mechanism was introduced. It can realize the passively adaptive grasping motion and avoid the bifurcation position problem in the clamping process. Subsequently, the three configurations of SDMH were analyzed by the sub-constraint function. Then, the conversion relationship between the various configurations was established through the adjacency matrix, which fundamentally explains the metamorphic mechanism of SDMH. Furthermore, the kinematics analysis of the SDMH was described by the D–H method. Kinematic equations of the single finger can be established in the different three grasping configurations using the matrix transformation method. The working space of SDMH can be obtained by numerical simulation. Finally, the physical prototype of SDMH was manufactured to verify the deployable and grasping performance of SDMH.