In the past extended two months, the DEXDEB research team mainly focused on the final experiments for verifying the proposed application of dexterous robot hands in deboning operation in meat industry as a scenario for manipulation and grasping of soft and deformable materials under the human-robot co-working scheme. Theoretical investigation and practical experiments were carried out by the three consortiums of the project. Grasp constraint of the metamorphic hand was investigated and kinematics and force control of the arm-hand integrated system is studied. Integrating the Shadow hand into the ABB robot arm at ADIV and the KCL metamorphic hand into the Fanuc robot arm at KCL and ABB robot arm at ADIV, a series of experiments were carried out leading to the demonstration of using dexterous robot hands in deboning operation and the finalization of the proposed experiment.

In the past two months, a project meeting was held in IFMA during week 40 discussing the final scenario of the project. The G4 KCL Metamorphic hand has been integrated on the ABB robot at ADIV and the identification of the butcher's left hand movements with a data glove was carried out through recording of the forces measured by the glove's tactile sensors (FSR sensors) and recording of the PIP[1] and MCP[2] joints angular coordinates measured by the glove's bend sensors (Bend sensors). Definition of the Shadow hand poses to perform grasping of meat for each deboning step was proposed. And formalization of ABB robot and Shadow hand movements defined for manipulation and grasping tasks on soft and deformable materials was investigated.

In the past two months, i.e. August and September of 2012, further to the initial experiments done at KCL, based on INSTRON® Model 5543 and the Shadow hand, several studies and experiments were performed at the IFMA and ADIV in the DEXDEB project. The five-fingered and four-fingered versions of KCL metamorphic hand have been manufactured and assembled which is ready for the experiment study and comparison investigation. A project meeting is to be held at IFMA on 2-6 October discussing the final scenarios and benchmark of robotization of deboning. Research papers on the meat grasping and deboning using the Shadow hand and the KCL metamorphic hand are in preparation and will be submitted in the coming month.

In the past two months, i.e. June and July of 2012, based on the test rig set up at KCL, the further tests and experiments of using the left-hand Shadow hand have been carrying out and a new version of left-hand metamorphic hand has been designed and is in manufacturing in Tianjin China. An international conference, i.e. the Second ASME/IFToMM International Conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR 2012) has been successfully held on 9-12th July in Tianjin China which was organized and chaired by Professor Jian S. Dai from King’s College London, Rich Walker has given a plenary presentation of the DEXDEB research at the conference. Researchers from KCL including Dr. Guowu Wei, Dr. Ketao Zhang, Dr. Helge Wurdemann and Dr. Vahid Aminzadeh joined the organization of this conference in China. Further, investigations and experiments on identification of butcher hand movements were carried out at IFMA.

In the past two months, i.e. April and May of 2012, based on the test rig set up at KCL, the initial tests and experiments of using the left-hand Shadow hand have been carrying out and some initial results has been achieved. A poster on the progress of this project has been delivered to the ECHORD workshop at ICRA 2012. Further, integrated with force sensor and Kinect vision system, more experiments on manual ham deboning have been realized which will contribute to the development and further experiments to be carried out in this project. A left-hand metamorphic hand is under constructing and will be ready for initial test in the next step