Shadow Dexterous Hand
Cutting-Edge Robotics Technology in the form of Robot Hands!
The Shadow Dexterous Hand is Shadow Robot’s flagship and most popular product. It’s the ONLY robot hand on the market to have 24 movements and 20 degrees of freedom (DOF) for increased flexibility in grasping and manipulating a range of objects. Each finger can move side to side independently, for unparalleled dexterity and there’s a total of 129 sensors to increase accuracy and enable high-level precision.
The hand has been a long favourite among universities and companies as a research tool, has recently been used to advance research into Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (having won the AIconics Award for best innovation in AI hardware 2019) and is a key component in their teleoperation system which is designed to take human operators out of harmful situations – such as nuclear decommissioning and bomb disposal. The revolutionary uses of the Shadow Hand has led to Shadow Robot winning the prestigious Queens Award for Enterprise under Best Innovation 2019.
Features
Human Kinematics
Approximating the kinematics of the human hand was our top priority when developing the Dexterous Hand. The Hand has 20 actuated degrees of freedom and a further 4 under-actuated movements for total of 24 joints. Each joint has a movement range again the same as or very close to that of a human hand, including the thumb and even the flex of the palm for the little finger.
Human Sized
The Shadow Dexterous Hand is a feat of miniaturisation. Within the same envelope as a human hand we have packed highly sensed finger tips, absolute position sensors for each joint and a control board on the palm allowing for system extension via add-ons. This increases operational capabilities significantly such as by wearing standard gloves for protection in specific tasks.
High Bandwidth Sensing
With 129 sensors in total, the Hand provides detailed telemetry, which can be exploited to generate innovative manipulation control systems or to provide detailed understanding of the external environment. As well as absolute position sensing for each joint the Hand includes force sensing for each actuator, tactile sensing on fingertips, temperature and motor current and voltage sensing. All of this data is made available to the user from 100Hz and up to 1kHz via a high bandwidth EtherCAT interface. Supporting this high frequency for data is the fast movement of the hand – from open to closed in 0.5 seconds.
Open Platform
The Hand is fully integrated with ROS, and we make available solid models and code. You can download and start using a virtual model of the Hand in ROS right now. Control of the Hand, including position control algorithms can be modified by the user in ROS. Firmware within the Hand itself can be made available for modification.
BioTac Tactile Sensor (optional)
For applications requiring highly detailed sensing capabilities Shadow has partnered with SynTouch LLC to make available the revolutionary BioTac tactile sensor in a package especially designed for the Shadow Hand. BioTac sensors can be added to all fingers and allows detailed force, micro-vibration and temperature gradient sensing. Data from the BioTac sensors is fully integrated and available via the same EtherCAT interface as other sensors.