Design and development of a bionic hand prosthesis

Abstract

It is known that a problem to amputees who lost a hand by accident or some type of illness, is the high cost yet little functionality of common hand prostheses. Often commercial prostheses are better, but not largely accessible. Nevertheless, we have recently observed a great number of hand prostheses pitched by open source projects. Despite, these prostheses are generally inaccurate and non-ergonomic to perform natural prehensions. In this study, we present the development of a hand prosthesis where geometric configuration was obtained from a scanned human hand. This procedure resulted in real dimensions and good proportions between fingers, palm and dorsum for the prosthesis. The grasps are performed by one servomotor to flex the fingers using cables and a pulley. The electromechanical system uses low cost components and can be controlled by the user’s voice. This achieved a functionality increase and better prehension effectiveness, as a consequence of anatomical form of the prosthesis. Due to the prototyping by material extrusion technology, a significant reduction in weight and construction costs was obtained.