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Columbia Hand was designed and created by a former member whose name is Long Wang of Robotics Lab at Columbia University. It is a highly underactuated 2-DOF hand with three fingers on each of which three piezoresitive films and three potenciameters are attached. The actuation of the three fingers all depend on one motor. The thumb can rotate horizontally and this motion is generated by another motor.
I began to work on Columbia Hand with an undergraduate student, Kyle, in early Semptember. The first thing I did was to fix the hand, including the connecting sensor wires and replacing piezoresitive films and potentiometers. After that, I started to learn Robot Operating System(ROS) on creating and building packeges and running C codes in ROS. Then, I revised Long's programs on motor control and sensor signal sampling to finally make the hand open and close freely. I also checked the sampling process of signal and got good signals from force sensors and potentiometers.
Kyle and I also spent a lot of time improving the structure of the hand. We designed the rubber coats and put them on the force sensors for greater friction coefficient and we also rearrange the position of fingers for a better grasping. We also made a new base for the hand to make the wires and motor controllers more organized. In addition, we interacted with another group who worked on the wrist. We are going to conduct some grasping experiments when the new hand is ready.
The new hand is under construction now and expected on December 5th.