A Compact, Reliable, and Reproducible Termination Method for Synthetic Fiber Tendons in Humanoid Robotic Hands for Space Applications

In the field of human spaceflight, humanoid robots that can interact with tools represent a valuable asset to long-term missions with transient human residence. To interact with their environment, due to form factor constraints, robots of this class feature tendon-driven robotic ‘hands’ as end effectors. One of the main failure points of robotic hands is the tendon terminations. The tendon terminations transfer the force of the grip and see high cyclic loading. Many studies focus on the max strength of these terminations but fail to study the performance over cyclic loading. This paper introduces a novel tendon termination that is compact, reliable, and repeatable. This is shown through repeated loading to a worst-case scenario lifting condition, as well as characterization of the ultimate strength of the tendon termination.