2016 IEEE EMBS Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Sciences (IECBES)
Development of a Low Cost Anthropomorphic
Robotic Hand Driven by Modified Glove Sensor
and Integrated with 3D Animation
Mochamad Ariyanto, Rifky Ismail, Ahmad Nurmiranto,
Wahyu Caesarendra
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Diponegoro University, 50275 Semarang, Indonesia
e-mail: ari_janto5@yahoo.co.id
Abstract— In this paper, a low cost anthropomorphic robotic
hand is developed using low cost materials. The robotic hand has
6 joints and 6 actuators. User or operator gives the hand
movement command by a modified glove sensor. The glove
consists of six flex sensors placed on the fingers and wrist join
that detect the bend of the fingers into a joint angle in each
finger. 3D CAD model of robotic hand is exported into
SimMechanics model using SimMechanics link to generate
SimMechanics block diagram that can run in MATLAB/
Simulink environment. The model in SimMechanics is utilized as
3D animation hand. The relationship of the servo motor rotation
angle among metacarpal phalangeal (MCP), proximal inter
phalangeal (PIP) and distal inter phalangeal (DIP) joints will be
presented. Finally, the performance of robotic hand is tested to
grasp various objects and to perform specific motion augmented
with 3D animation. The experiment results show the successful
development of a low cost anthropomorphic robotic hand that
can perform activities of daily living (ADLs).
Keywords—robotic hand; anthropomorphic; flex sensor; 3D
animation; SimMechanics
I. INTRODUCTION
Design and development of robotic hand have different
purposes, which can be used in the industrial world, medical
high-precision systems, rehabilitation, prosthetic hand, and
from aero-spatial vehicles to games, as well as in research to
study the structure and function of the human hand. In many
cases, the ability of the robot can exceed human capabilities as
a creator. The accuracy and strength are some of the reasons
human beings choose robots as tools. In addition, when viewed
in terms of financial and human safety reasons, both of these
factors indicate that the robot is very important to be developed
in various fields [1].
The developed robotic hands can perform many
functions like human hands such as opening and closing,
grasping an object and have a fast motion response to the
given input signal. The characteristic of the human hand has a
total of 20 degrees of freedom (DOF) where each finger has a
finger bone part that can move independently [2]. In the
human hand, fingers have DIP (distal inter phalangeal) joint,
PIP (proximal inter phalangeal) joint and MCP (metacarpal
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Institute for Factory Automation and Production Systems,
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Erlangen, Germany
e-mail: paryanto@faps.fau.de
phalangeal) joint. Among the knuckles, fingers have a
connection that makes the finger joints move easily. For
further development, the robotic hand should pay attention to
natural mechanism of the human hand, so that it gets the
great movement of the robotic hand and approach the real
human hand movements.
In this study, a design of proposed robotic hand was
referred to previous laboratory study and industrial robotic
hand. Some of robotic hands that have been developed and
become a reference model for developing the proposed robotic
hand are The Shadow Hand [3], Dist Hand [4] and NTU hand
[5]. However, the existing developed robotic hands are too
expensive for a society in developing countries. Thus, the focus
in this research is to develop a low cost robotic hand that can
be afforded by people of these countries.
The previous work about detection and tele-operation of
human hand motion has been studied by Milea, et al. [6]. The
study has a successful development of tele-operation of a
robotic arm using bending sensors which is placed on the
human operator’s joints (shoulder, elbow, wrist and fingers).
The collected signal from the bending sensors during different
movements by the human operator were decoded, processed
and implemented in the drive system corresponding to the
anthropomorphic robotic arm. The robot can effectively handle
and follow all set of complex movements by the human arm
operator. While the utilization of smart glove that consist of
bending sensor/flex sensor has been conducted by Ali, et al.
[7]. The glove sensor is implemented in the artificial hand
gripper controller for the rehabilitation process.
The purpose of this research will focus on developing the
design of low cost robotic hand that has a shape and can move
resemble a real human hand. The proposed robotic hand has
five active DOF in its fingers and one DOF on the wrist that is
driven modified glove sensor. The sensor is implemented to
decode the complex motion of the human hand. For real time
3D visualization, the 3D CAD model of robotic hand is
exported into SimMechanics First Generation model using
SimMechanics link to generate SimMechanics block diagram.
Then the model in SimMechanics is utilized as 3D animation
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 2016 IEEE EMBS Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Sciences (IECBES)

view, which is moved by a given input signal from the Elastic

rubber
modified glove sensor.
II. ROBOTIC HAND SYSTEM Guitar
strings
A. Hardware Design of Robotic Hand System
Modified glove that consists of flex sensors is utilized as
tele-operation and tele-replication of human hand motions. The
glove consists of 6 flex sensors that have 6 inches in length and Medium
2 pins. The work principle of flex sensor is similar to a servo
potentiometer. When the flex sensor is bent, the resistance will
change. Fig. 1 shows the placement of flex sensors on modified
glove. Five flex sensors are used to measure the bent angle of
each finger and the last one is utilized to measure the bent
angle of the wrist.
Flex sensor Micro
servo
Hand glove (a) (b)
Fig. 2. The developed low cost 6 DOF robotic hand; (a) 3D model in CAD
software, (b) Robotic hand made using acrylic

The integration of the robotic hand system is depicted in

Fig. 1. Modified glove sensor
The purpose of this study is to develop low cost
anthropomorphic robotic hand that can be tele-operated by
human hand motion and augmented with 3D animation
SimMechanics for 3D visualization of its motion. It is made
from low cost material like acrylic and manufactured using
laser cutting. The robotic hand mechanism has 15 joints and 6
active degrees of freedom (DOF). Each of the index, middle,
little, and ring have 3 joints, while the thumb and wrist have 2
joints and 1 joint respectively. In order to move like a human
finger, the closing mechanism of fingers is driven using servo
motors and then the servo pull the finger using guitar string.
For opening mechanism, elastic rubber is attached on each of
fingers that can draw the finger for opening after closing. The
proposed mechanism of robotic hand is simple and low cost.
Five micro servos and one medium servo motor are chosen to
drive the motion of each finger joint and wrist joint
respectively.
The total weight of the robotics system, including
mechatronics and electronics is 450 grams. The size of robotic
hand is approximately about 180 mm x 80 mm, and the width
of the palm is 25 mm. This size is about the average size of a
human hand of Asian people.
Fig. 3. Glove sensor is reading the bent angle of each finger
and wrist using Arduino MEGA 2560 microcontroller.
Arduino MEGA 2560 is chosen because it has 128 KB
memory, 16 analog input pins and 54 digital I/O pins, which is
suitable for this research. The Arduino MEGA 2560
microcontroller send the read angle for commanding the servo
motor actuators to drive for opening and closing index, middle,
little, ring, thumb and wrist joint. The read angle of glove
sensor also send to the host computer using serial transmit. The
read data angle must be converted into uint8 data type in order
to it can be sent using Serial Transmit block. The
SimMechanics 3D animation in MATLAB/Simulink
environment that runs on a host computer is reading the angle
bent of each fingers and wrist joint using Serial Receive block
with baud rate of 115.200 bit/s. A power bank with the output
voltage of 5 V and output current 2 A is utilized as power
source of the robotic hand system.
Power bank
Flex sensor with Robotic hand
a glove
Breadboard
Analog input from servo
motor
Microcontroller

According to Belter, et al. [8], the developed robotic hand

can be utilized as prosthetic hand for people with high level of Serial communication
amputation because the weight of robotic hand is less than 500 via USB
grams. The developed of low cost anthropomorphic robotic Virtual reality
hand can be seen clearly in Fig. 2. In the Fig. 2, 3D Model in
CAD software is imported in the SimMechanics block diagram Fig. 3. Robotic hand system augmented with 3D Animation
using SimMechanics Link.

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 2016 IEEE EMBS Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Sciences (IECBES)

B. Software and SimMechanics 3D Animation Integration. system. SimMechanics Link is a CAD plug-in for exporting
After developing robotic hand and modified glove sensor, CAD assemblies from CAD software. The SimMechanics
the next step is to develop the block diagram that reads the Link generates an XML file detailing the structure and
motion of glove sensor, feed the read signal to robotic hand properties of CAD assembly and 3-D geometry files for
and 3D animation in Simulink. It requires blocks from visualizing the various CAD parts. The result of the imported
Simulink Support Package for Arduino, the blocks can access robotic hand model from SolidWorks to SimMechanics model
sensor and actuator via Arduino MEGA. An analog input can be seen in Fig. 5. In the Fig. 6, the resulted block diagram
block is used to measure the flex sensor on each joint of from SimMechanics Link is modified by adding Serial
position control joystick and standard servo write is employed Configuration and Serial Receive block.
to drive servo motor servo.
The signal from analog input is noisy. To overcome this
noisy measurement, 1st order low pass filter with cut of
frequency of 10 rad/s is implemented. The angle command
from the modified glove sensor is transmitted using Serial
Transmit block for 3D visualization in SimMechanics. The
block diagram as shown in Fig. 4 is embedded in to Arduino
MEGA 2560 microcontroller using Simulink Support Package
for Arduino. The package can be downloaded freely at
MathWorks website.

Fig. 6. Serial communication and SimMechanics 3D animation block diagram

The direction of each finger in the SimMechanics block

diagram is commanded using joint actuator block. Each joint
in each finger is represented using revolute joint block. The
block diagram that is embedded into Arduino MEGA
microcontroller has multi sampling rate. Table I summarizes
the sampling rate for reading sensor, commanding motor
servo, and sending the commanded angle in to 3D animation.
The 3D animation visualization utilized as robotic hand
system is shown in Fig. 7.

Fig. 4. Robotic hand blok diagram in Simulink

Fig. 5. Import results from SolidWorks CAD mode to SimMechanics First

Generation.

The 3D CAD model in CAD Software as shown in Fig. 2

is exported into SimMechanics block diagram using
SimMechanics Link for 3D visualization of the robotic hand
Fig. 7. 3D animation SimMechanics of the robotic hand

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 2016 IEEE EMBS Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Sciences (IECBES)

TABLE I. SAMPLING RATE OF ROBOTIC HAND SYSTEM by the difference in length of the fingers. This means that the
Sampling four finger tips of robotic hand move with slight difference
Subsystem
rate (Hz) position when they are given by the some angle in each joint.
Data acquisition of measured angle 100
Sending commanded joint angle to servo motor 100
TABLE 3. FORWARD KINEMATICS OF ROBOTICS HAND
Read sensor from flex sensor 100
Sending joint angle to 3D Animation Finger
0.25
SimMechanics Index Middle Ring Little
Fingertip Thumb θ1 = 75; θ1 = 75; θ1 = 75; θ1 = 75;
position θ1 = 70;
III. KINEMATICS ANALYSIS θ3 = 90
θ2 = 90; θ2 = 90; θ2 = 90; θ2 = 90;
θ3 = 90 θ3 = 90 θ3 = 90 θ3 = 90
Denavit-Hartenberg (D-H) parameters are employed to
X (mm) -19.89 -29.68 -27.42 -28,72 -23.18
study the robotic hand fingers forward kinematics. In order to
simplify the computation, a thumb is assumed as two links Y (mm) 47.68 8.99 13.56 8.73 6.21
using two revolute joints (RR). Four last fingers are assumed
as three links with three revolute joints (RRR). In this study,
the inverse kinematics of each finger is calculated using B. Inverse Kinematics
trigonometric method. The initial joint parameters of each link
are summarized in Table II.
When the coordinates of the fingertip positions have been
TABLE II. INITIAL D-H PARAMETER OF THE PROPOSED ROBOTIC HAND known, it is possible to calculate the angle of each joint
fingers using inverse kinematics. This method is employed to
ai (mm) αi d find the joint angle θ1 , θ 2 , θ3 of each finger after giving
Link i θi
Thumb Index Middle Ring Little predefined fingertip position. The joint angle θ1 , can be
1
38 29 34 29 23 0 o
0 θiPIP calculated using equation (3) as follows
(PIP)
2 θ iMCP
- 30 31 30 24 0o 0
θ1 = arctan [
(MCP) y − l2 sin(θ12 ) ]
(3)
3
(DIP)
35 28 28 28 23 0o 0 θiDIP [ x − l2 cos(θ12 )]

The new variable of θ12 can be computed using equation

A. Forward Kinematics
To find the fingertips position based on D-H parameter table, (4)
forward kinematics method is used for computation. The
method can determine the relationship of finger joints with  
respect to fingertip position. For thumb joints (RR), the equation
that expresses the fingertip position is written in (1).
θ12 = ± arccos  −
 2
c
 + arctan b
2 
a +b 
a ( ) (4)


x = l 2 cos(θ1 + θ 2 ) + l1 cos θ1
(1) The joint angle θ2 can be computed using equation (6)
y = l 2 sin(θ1 + θ 2 ) + l1 sin θ1
after substitute the equation (5).
The fingertip positions of Index, middle, ring and little that
assumed as three revolute joints (RRR) can be expressed as x 2 + y 2 − l12 − l2 2
cos θ 2 =
written in (2). 2 ⋅ l1 ⋅ l2 (5)
2
sin θ 2 = ± 1 − (cos θ 2
x = l1 cos θ1 + l2 cos(θ1 + θ2 ) + l3 cos(θ1 + θ2 + θ3 )
(2)
y = l1 sin θ1 + l2 sin(θ1 + θ2 ) + l3 sin(θ1 + θ2 + θ3 )
θ 2 = arctan(sin θ 2 , cos θ 2 ) (6)
Using predefined joint angle metacarpal phalange (MCP)
joint θ1 , proximal inter phalange (PIP) θ 2 and distal inter Finally, joint angle θ3 can be defined as in equation (7)

phalange (DIP) θ3 , the fingertip position of each fingers can and (8)

be computed using equation (1) and (2). Table III shows the φ = arctan  y − l1 sin θ1 − l2 sin θ12 x − l cos θ − l cos θ  (7)
 1 1 2 12 
resulted forward kinematics solution for each fingertip
position. The results show that the fingertip positions for four
θ3 = φ − θ1 − θ 2 (8)
fingers have slight differences. These differences are affected

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 2016 IEEE EMBS Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Sciences (IECBES)

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Integration of 3D Animation SimMechanics and Robotic
Hand
The integration of robotic hand, modified glove sensor and
SimMechanics 3D animation for visualization will be tested.
The test can be seen clearly in Fig. 8. The robotic hand is tele-
operated using a modified glove to mimic the human hand
motion. From Fig. 8, each finger of robotic hand can follow
human hand motion input via modified glove. For testing of
grasping and holding an object, the robotic hand can perfectly
grasp and hold the objects like a screwdriver and a hammer.
For 3D visualization using SimMechanics, 3D animation can
run real time on a computer that runs the block diagram as
shown in Fig. 6. Communication from Arduino MEGA
microcontroller and computer is performed using serial
communication with baud rate of 115.200 bit/s. This baud rate
is fast enough to transmit five data of each fingers of robotic
hand from Arduino microcontroller to a computer. The
Arduino MEGA can run the robotic hand system in real time
without over run.
respect to servo motor angle. MCP and DIP joint in the little
have the most linear relationship with respect to servo motor
angle as shown in Fig. 9(b) and 9(c). The overall relationship
of the servo motor and robotic hand joint angle in each finger
approach is according to a linear relationship.
The robotic hand is tested to perform a specific task in
daily activity without using SimMechanics 3D animation.
Robotic hand performs the daily activity like grasp mouse,
right click or left click the mouse, type the word using
keyboard and play piano. The specific test is perfectly
performed by a robotic hand with the modified glove as
human hand motion input. Performance test of robotic hand
to do some human hand motion can be seen clearly in Fig.
10. Based on the overall performance of robotic hand with or
without 3D animation, the results show the successful of
developing a low cost anthropomorphic robotic hand that can
perform activities of daily living (ADLs). The overall
performance of the robotic hand system can be seen online at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw7WRfB5VA0.
100

PIP Joint (degree)

80

60 index
thumb
40 middle
ring
20
little

0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
Servo Angle (degree)
(a)
(a) (b) 100
MCP Joint (degree)

80

60

Thumb
40
Index
Middle
20
Ring
Little
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
Servo Angle (degree)
(c) (d)
(b)
100
Fig. 8. SimMechanics 3D Animation test result with robotic hand: (a) Closing
hand (b) Thumb and index movement (c) Grasping a screwdriver (d) Grasping
DIP Joint (degree)

80
a hammer
60

B. Robotic hand performance test

40 Index
In order to know the characteristic of a servo motor angle middle
input with respect to each joint angle, the PIP, MIP and DIP 20 ring
joint of each finger is measured based on experimental work. little
The measured results show in Fig. 9 that reveals the 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
Servo Angle (degree)
relationship between motor servo angle and each joint in each
(c)
finger of robotic hand. As can be seen in Fig. 9(a) the PIP Fig. 9. Servo angle input versus joint angle of each finger; (a) PIP joint (b)
joint in the middle has the most linear relationship with DIP joint (c) MCP joint

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 2016 IEEE EMBS Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Sciences (IECBES)
Fig. 10. Performance of robotic hand
V. CONCLUSION
Based on the test results both in integration with the 3D
animation and robotic hand performance, the proposed low
cost robotic hand can successfully perform activities of daily
living (ADLs) such as grasps various objects, right click or left
click the mouse, type the word using keyboard and play the
piano. The motion of robotic hand can mimic the human hand
motion by using a modified glove sensor. For the future
research, the robotic hand mechanism will be improved by
using tendon-spring mechanism and 3D print technology.
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