The Development of a Soft Robot Hand with Pin-Array Structure

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is well structured and the proposed solution is very interesting. The reviewer suggests acceptance after a minor revision. In particular:

1)     The equations should be revised in details.

2)     Figure 18 should be modified and shown with a major resolution.

3)     Figure 19 should be modified and shown with a major resolution.

Author Response

We are very grateful to the reviewer for making clear and accurate review comments in detail. The following file is my responses to the reviewer's suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper deals with the development of a robot hand with wide versatility. A new type of grasping mode is presented. The grasping force is analysed. A prototype and some experimental test are shown.

 

The work is interesting, consistent, clearly written. The experimental tests and video demonstrated the validity of the device. In my opinion, the paper can be published in Applied Science after minor revisions.

Some comments and suggestions

-A figure of the previous CTSA hand developed by the authors would help the reader to understand better the sentences of the lines 110-118.

-Figure 9. The force F_o seems to become negative. It would be appropriate to discuss this fact. Remove “N” in the caption

 

-Table 1. Please, alphabetize the symbols. Some terms are missing, like r_p.

 

-Section 5.3.1: The static characteristics of the pressure transmitters (sensors) should be declared.

 

- Some discussion should be done regarding the measurement of the grasping force. In my opinion, Figure 21 is unclear. For what value of internal pressure was the gripping force measured? I believe that the gripping force measurement should be done when the transient is exhausted, ie with the internal pressure stabilized at a static value. In addition, the trend of internal pressure over time is not very significant of the dynamic behavior of the hand, this being influenced by the parameters of the test circuit, such as the volume of the supply pipe.

In my opinion, the authors should report the trends of the gripping force as a function of internal pressure, under static conditions.

Furthermore, the difference between Figure 21a and 21 b is not clear (see labels of the figures).

 

-The writing could be improved. I had difficulty understanding the meaning of some sentences. A few non-comprehensive examples:

 

pag 1, line 38: the sentence “Common dexterous hands ….” does not have a verb.

fig 2, label: move direction>>moving direction.

pag. 4, line 139: in the sentence “Replace the fluid drive…” remove “replace”.

pag 5, line 163: “K pin assemblies” I do not understand what “K” is.

pag 12, line 347: quality>>mass.

Table 4: quality>>mass.

Author Response

We are very grateful to the reviewer for making clear and accurate review comments in detail. The following file is my responses to the reviewer's suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf