Salisbury robot hand
notes: label: Description
content: An intriguing piece of machinery from the 1980s, the Salisbury hand has three identical fingers, each of which has three joints. To actuate the hand, electric motors pull on a dozen tension cables. The motors move the fingers with controlled forces and motions. Sensors in the base of each robot finger permit control of the tendon tensions and finger forces, enabling the fingertips to grip and manipulate objects of varying sizes and shapes. In the early 1980s, this design provided a whole new way to coordinate three fingers to allow the hand to grasp objects and simultaneously move them within the grasp. For example, this ability enabled the hand to grasp a shaft and fit it into a hole by pushing and wiggling until the hand detected that the shaft was fully inserted. The action is analogous to what a human does when assembling objects. This improvement in machine-grasping versatility served as the foundation for future efforts to devise defter robot hands.
label: Description
content: Under computer control, a human-scale programmable robot arm typically supported the hand and moved it through its workspace. Devising a robot arm was a feat in its own right, the brainchild of Vic Scheinman, a Stanford mechanical engineering PhD student, who preceded Salisbury by about a decade. (The museum also has a prototype of Scheinman's invention, developed with Unimation and General Motors and known as the PUMA, or Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly.)
label: Description
content: The museum's robot hand is one of about 20 made in the 1980s at Salisbury Robotics Inc., a manufacturing firm Salisbury set up in Palo Alto, California. Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, acquired this robot hand in 1984 to experiment with its potential for handling hazardous materials and working in hazardous places, among other things. Sandia researcher Cliff Loucks remembers the machine had a "sweet" design and a hefty price tag—$32,265.00.
label: Description
content: NASA also provided funds for refining the hand, a potential tool for the space station and other applications. Although some industrial firms had secret robot experiments underway at the time, there was no other commercially available robot hand except Salisbury's.
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Mechanisms
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Transfer from U.S. Department of Energy, Sandia Laboratories
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2017.0346.01
label: catalog number
content: 2017.0346.01
label: accession number
content: 2017.0346
objectType: label: Object Name
content: robot hand
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: plastic (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: rubber (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: brass (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 11 in x 4 in x 33 in; 27.94 cm x 10.16 cm x 83.82 cm