Design and Validation of an Antagonistic Tendon-Driven Dexterous Robotic Hand with Bidirectional Operation

Chunghyeon Lee; Hyukjun Kwon; Sungeon Kim; Saehyun Moon; Seokhwan Jeong

cs.ROSep 28, 2026

Design and Validation of an Antagonistic Tendon-Driven Dexterous Robotic Hand with Bidirectional Operation

Authors: Chunghyeon Lee, Hyukjun Kwon, Sungeon Kim, Saehyun Moon, Seokhwan Jeong

Organizations: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sogang University, Seoul 04107, South Korea

Abstract

Dexterous robotic hands typically reproduce human hand morphology but inherit its one-sided grasping workspace, requiring wrist or arm reorientation to grasp from the opposite side. Existing reversible hands generally rely on non-anthropomorphic, soft, or task-specific finger arrangements, whereas conventional five-digit anthropomorphic hands remain designed primarily for palmar-side grasping. This paper presents an anthropomorphic, human-scale (200 mm length), lightweight (220 g), 3D-printed, 17-DoF robotic hand built on a bidirectional antagonistic tendon-routing mechanism, in which flexion/extension (except the coupled joint) and abduction/adduction at joints are actively driven without passive return springs. The proposed routing mechanism allows all degrees of freedom to cross their neutral configuration and form grasp closures on either the palmar or dorsal side. Experimental evaluation demonstrates an average motor-to-joint transmission error of 3.0%, an average joint transmission bandwidth of 13.2 Hz, a maximum fingertip force of 29 N, and a positioning repeatability up to 0.15 mm. The hand further achieves a Kapandji score of 8, successfully performs all 33 GRASP Taxonomy grasp types, and performs palmar- and dorsal-side grasping tasks, validating bidirectional operation in a compact, human-scale platform.

Figures & tables

Fig. 1: Proposed bidirectional dexterous hand: fingers actively flex across the neutral configuration toward either the palmar (green) or dorsal (red) side, enabling bidirectional reversible two-sided grasping.

Definition	Symbol	Value	Unit
MCP FE routing radius	$r_{\text{MCP}}$	4.25	mm
MCP AbAd routing radius	$r_{\text{AbAd}}$	10	mm
PIP FE routing radius	$r_{\text{PIP}}$	4.5	mm
CMC FE routing radius	$r_{\text{CMC}}$	4.8	mm
CMC AbAd routing radius	$r_{\text{T.AbAd}}$	9	mm
MCP FE routing radius for thumb	$r_{\text{T.MCP}}$	5.7	mm

TABLE I: Design Parameters and Specifications of the Fingers

Fig. 4: Design of the proposed system. Non-thumb finger: (a) assembly view, (b) exploded view, (c) fabricated prototype, and (d) pulley-bearing structure of the FE joints for friction reduction in the BATM. Thumb: (e) assembly view, (f) exploded view, and (g) fabricated prototype. Hand: (h) exploded view, (i) hand dimensions and finger splay and (j) fabricated prototype.

Fig. 5: Workspace of (a) a non-thumb finger and (b) the thumb.

Fig. 6: Prototype of the wrist and actuator module, showing the spring-tube connections and helical-grooved spools.

Fig. 7: (a) Kinematic validation setup with joint-mounted encoders. Measured and estimated joint angles for (b) MCP flexion/extension, (c) PIP/DIP flexion/extension and (d) MCP abduction/adduction.

Fig. 8: Bode plots of joint transmission bandwidth for (a) MCP and (b) PIP flexion/extension at peak-to-peak ranges of $60^{\circ}$ , $90^{\circ}$ , and $120^{\circ}$ amplitudes, and (c) MCP abduction/adduction at peak-to-peak ranges of $20^{\circ}$ , $40^{\circ}$ , and $70^{\circ}$ amplitudes.

Fig. 9: Tip force validation: (a) experimental setup and (b) maximum tip force. Repeatability validation: experimental setup for (c) flexion/extension and (d) abduction/adduction, and repeatability results over 100 cycles with and without tendon pre-stretching for (e) flexion/extension and (f) abduction/adduction.

Fig. 10: Dexterity evaluation using the (a) Kapandji test and (b) GRASP taxonomy, demonstrating 8/10 Kapandji positions and 33/33 successful grasp types.

Fig. 11: Compliant response to external impact.

Fig. 12: Applications of bidirectional operation. (a) Vision-based ambidextrous teleoperation. (b) Consecutive left- and right-handed handshakes with a single hand module. (c) Simultaneous grasping of two objects on opposite sides, exploiting the expanded workspace. (d) Dynamic grasping via bidirectional operation without wrist rotation.

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