Barrett BH8-280
The Barrett BH8-280 is a multi-fingered programmable grasper developed by Barrett Technology as part of the BarrettHand BH8 series. It is a self-contained, fully integrated manipulation unit with three articulated fingers, four brushless motors and onboard control electronics, intended for robotics research and flexible automation.
Two of the three fingers have an additional spread degree of freedom with 180° of lateral mobility, allowing the hand to reconfigure its finger layout in under a second to adapt to different object shapes and orientations. The design uses intelligent underactuation based on Barrett’s patented TorqueSwitch mechanism.
All joints are equipped with high-precision position encoders. Communication is provided via industry-standard serial or high-speed CANbus interfaces (USB adapters included), making integration with any robotic arm straightforward. Barrett supports the hand in software through the Libbarrett C++ real-time controls library and ROS packages; the official Libbarrett documentation explicitly lists the BH8-280 alongside the WAM arm as primary supported Barrett products.
The BH8-280 is typically deployed in research and academic environments for grasping research, manipulation of objects with unknown geometry, teleoperation, and in applications such as remote handling, hazardous-material manipulation and dexterity studies.
Classification
3-finger hand · serves as: End effector, Gripper, Manipulator.
Which group Barrett BH8-280 belongs to and how it is built
Multi-functional robotic hands used primarily in research labs on grasping and manipulation.
Robotic hand with three fingers, used in research and classic manipulation applications.