MCR-Bionic Hand: Anatomical Structural Priors for Dexterous Manipulation

2026-06-11

AI Summary

This work proposes a 1:1 biomimetic dexterous hand grounded in “structural intelligence” to overcome the limitations of conventional dexterous hands, which rely on high-dimensional active control and fail to replicate the human hand’s low-dimensional, efficient manipulation enabled by its anatomical structure. The design uniquely integrates an eight-bone double-row wrist, crossed tendons, palmar plate constraints, and intrinsic muscle pathways, leveraging both structural priors and muscle-mediated modulation to achieve coordinated wrist–finger motion, extensor hood coupling, and intrinsic muscle regulation. This architecture maps low-dimensional inputs to default grasping postures while enabling fine, contact-driven adjustments. Experiments demonstrate successful execution of rich-contact tasks such as coin rotation and pen repositioning, confirming that structural priors effectively reduce control dimensionality and enhance dexterity.

Abstract

Dexterous robotic hands are usually formulated as high dimensional active control systems governed by degrees of freedom, actuation, and algorithms. Human hand dexterity, however, is partly encoded in the physical architecture of bones, ligaments, tendons, aponeuroses, and intrinsic muscles. This work describes that contribution as two linked forms of structural intelligence: structural prior generation, in which wrist to finger tenodesis, FDS/FDP routing, and the dorsal extensor hood transform low dimensional posture inputs into default grasp configurations and PIP to DIP coordination; and muscle mediated modulation, in which extrinsic muscles, lumbricals, and interossei regulate MCP posture, distal stability, fingertip force paths, and contact states around that default state. Based on this framework, MCR-Bionic Hand is developed as a 1:1 musculoskeletal biomimetic hand integrating a two row eight bone wrist, cross wrist tendons, anatomical flexor routing, volar plate and collateral ligament constraints, the dorsal extensor hood, and intrinsic muscle pathways within one body. Functional demonstrations and geometric mechanical models show that wrist posture induces multi joint pre shaping, the extensor hood maps PIP posture to a coupled DIP response, and intrinsic plus pathways modulate distal stability and fingertip action direction after grasp formation. Contact rich tasks, including coin rotation, pen transfer, dorsal coin flipping, and cube manipulation, show that MCR-Bionic links low dimensional state generation with fine post contact modulation. These results suggest that anatomical biomimetics is valuable not for visual similarity, but for identifying human hand structures that perform part of control.

Problem

• dexterous manipulation
• anatomical biomimetics
• structural intelligence
• robotic hand
• musculoskeletal system

Innovation

• structural intelligence
• anatomical biomimetics
• tenodesis
• extensor hood
• intrinsic muscle pathways