Soft dexterous hand with enhanced grasping performance enabled by rigid-flexible structure and visual perception

Abstract Soft robotic hands face trade-offs between flexibility and load capacity, with rigid-palm designs limiting grasping conformity and fully soft structures struggling under payloads. Existing pneumatic systems suffer from tubing interference and poor sealing. This study presents a bioinspired modular hand combining rigid supports and soft actuators to enhance stability and payload (2 N fingertip force at 300 kPa; 1.97 kg maximum grasping payload). A biomimetic thenar joint and rigid linkages optimize thumb-mediated grasping, while built-in pneumatic channels eliminate external tubing, improving reliability. Integrated with RGB-D vision and robotic arm coordination, the system achieved autonomous grasping with 87.22% and 83.33% success rates in single- and multi-object tasks, respectively. This hybrid rigid-flexible approach advances dexterous robotic manipulation by synergizing structural adaptability, modular maintenance, and intelligent perception for practical robotic applications.