Digitus: towards a platform for the characterization of finger biomechanics in fine manipulation

This work presents the results of the preliminary experiments performed with DIGITUS, a 2 active and 1 passive Degrees of Freedom (DoFs) fully backdrivable closed kinematics chain planar robot for finger biomechanics investigation. After a brief description of the mechanism and actuation, the paper focuses on the FPGA based control electronics. To test the platform usability two experiments were performed. The first experiment shows the DIGITUS capability to generate force disturbances at the end-effector. The second experiment shows how DIGITUS performs circular trajectories by means of appropriate force-fields at the end-effector.