Jones L
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139, USA.
Presence (Camb). 1997 Feb;6(1):29-56. doi: 10.1162/pres.1997.6.1.29.
The sensory and motor capacities of the human hand are reviewed in the context of providing a set of performance characteristics against which prosthetic and dextrous robot hands can be evaluated. The sensors involved in processing tactile, thermal, and proprioceptive (force and movement) information are described, together with details on their spatial densities, sensitivity, and resolution. The wealth of data on the human hand's sensory capacities is not matched by an equivalent database on motor performance. Attempts at quantifying manual dexterity have met with formidable technological difficulties due to the conditions under which many highly trained manual skills are performed. Limitations in technology have affected not only the quantifying of human manual performance but also the development of prosthetic and robotic hands. Most prosthetic hands in use at present are simple grasping devices, and imparting a "natural" sense of touch to these hands remains a challenge. Several dextrous robot hands exist as research tools and even though some of these systems can outperform their human counterparts in the motor domain, they are still very limited as sensory processing systems. It is in this latter area that information from studies of human grasping and processing of object information may make the greatest contribution.
本文在提供一套性能特征的背景下，对人手的感觉和运动能力进行了综述，据此可对假肢手和灵巧机器人手进行评估。文中描述了处理触觉、热觉和本体感觉（力和运动）信息所涉及的传感器，以及它们的空间密度、灵敏度和分辨率的详细信息。关于人手感觉能力的大量数据，在运动性能方面却没有与之相当的数据库。由于许多训练有素的手工技能是在特定条件下执行的，因此量化手部灵巧性的尝试遇到了巨大的技术困难。技术限制不仅影响了对人类手部性能的量化，也影响了假肢手和机器人手的发展。目前使用的大多数假肢手都是简单的抓握装置，给这些手赋予“自然”的触觉仍然是一个挑战。有几种灵巧机器人手作为研究工具存在，尽管其中一些系统在运动领域的表现可能优于人类，但作为感觉处理系统，它们仍然非常有限。正是在后者这个领域，来自人类抓握和物体信息处理研究的信息可能会做出最大贡献。
