Benchmarking Hand and Grasp Resilience to Dynamic Loads

In this work, we investigate the behavior of artificial hands under impulsive load conditions. Resilience to impacts has been seldom considered in grasp and manipulation literature and benchmarks, although it is one of the most relevant issues in a number of applications involving physical interactions with unstructured environments, in prosthetic as well as in robotic manipulation. We focus on two research questions: the capability of hands to withstand impacts before being damaged (Hand Resilience) and before losing the grasp on a object (Grasp Resilience). To these aims, we introduce an evaluation framework, including a precisely defined experimental set-up and test procedure. The proposed methodology, metrics, and test variables are discussed through analytical evaluation and with experimental data extracted from the testing of three different hand designs.