  Many robotic hands currently rely on extremely dexterous robotic fingers and
a thumb joint to envelop themselves around an object. Few hands focus on the
palm even though human hands greatly benefit from their central fold and soft
surface. As such, we develop a novel structurally compliant soft palm, which
enables more surface area contact for the objects that are pressed into it.
Moreover, this design, along with the development of a new low-cost, flexible
illumination system, is able to incorporate a high-resolution tactile sensing
system inspired by the GelSight sensors. Concurrently, we design RObotic
Modular Endoskeleton Optical (ROMEO) fingers, which are underactuated
two-segment soft fingers that are able to house the new illumination system,
and we integrate them into these various palm configurations. The resulting
robotic hand is slightly bigger than a baseball and represents one of the first
soft robotic hands with actuated fingers and a passively compliant palm, all of
which have high-resolution tactile sensing. This design also potentially helps
researchers discover and explore more soft-rigid tactile robotic hand designs
with greater capabilities in the future.
  The supplementary video can be found here: https://youtu.be/RKfIFiewqsg
