The paper briefly describes the semi-anthropomorphic telemanipulation system and discusses the advanced capabilities that were demonstrated in the initial performance evaluation. The system's terminus devices are anthropomorphic: an exoskeleton sixteen degree of freedom (DOF) glove controller that senses human finger forces and backdrives slave motions to every joint of its four instrumented fingers; and a four fingered sixteen DOF anthropomorphic slave hand-wrist-forearm. The master glove is attached to a non-anthropomorphic six DOF universal force-reflecting hand controller (FRHC). The mechanical forearm is mounted to an industrial robot (PUMA 560), replacing its standard forearm. Active electromechanical compliance (AEC) systems for each finger and the wrist provide adjustable compliance, enabling human-like soft grasping. The system is controlled by a high performance distributed control system. Initial performance evaluations focused on tool handling capabilities and astronaut equivalent task executions. Results reveal that the combination of a fingered hand and active compliance enables unprecedented task executions. But it also became evident that complex manipulations require a dual arm robot.

The author describes a newly developed mechanical hand system. The robot hand is in human-like configuration with a thumb and three fingers, a palm, a wrist, and the forearm in which the hand and wrist actuators are located. Each finger and the wrist has its own active electromechanical compliance system, allowing the joint drive trains to be stiffened or loosened. This mechanism imitates the human muscle dual function of positioner and stiffness controller. This is essential for soft grappling operations. The hand-wrist assembly has 16 finger joints, three wrist joints, and five compliance mechanisms for a total of 24 degrees of freedom. The strength of the hand is roughly half that of the human hand and its size is comparable to a male hand. The hand is controlled through an exoskeleton glove controller that the operator wears. The glove provides the man-machine interface in telemanipulation control mode: it senses the operator's inputs to guide the mechanical hand in hybrid position and force control. The hand system is intended for dexterous manipulations in structured environments. Typical applications will include work in hostile environments such as space operations and nuclear power plants.>