Design and construction of RH2000 cybernatics hand

Abstract

Recently, the number of patients with wrist and forearm amputations increased tremendously due to trauma, prolonged constriction, or surgery. The amputees experienced lots of problems, especially in dealings with their daily life activities. Thus, as a solution, a prototype called as RH2000 Cybernetics Hand is designed. Early design of bionic hand comprises of 14 motors with 14 degree of freedom which caused the bionic hand to be costly and complex to control. In this research, design of a bionic hand that has 10 degrees of freedom with 5 motors attached to mechanical linkages is proposed. The bionic hand designs in SolidWorks that resembled the function and size of an actual human hand. It is fabricated using aluminum 6061 as it is light in weight and durable. As for the sensor, V3 muscle sensor is utilized to identify a signal generated from the human muscle and amplified it as the primary control signal to control the movement of the bionic hand. The performance of bionic hand is tested in terms of repeatability and accuracy. Repeatability accuracy test is divided into two phases, the first test is constructed to analyze the repeatability of angular movement for each finger while the second test is constructed to analyze the repeatability of wrist movement. Similarly, the accuracy test is also divided into two phases where the first test is conducted to analyze the accuracy of finger press while the second test is to analyze the accuracy of hand grasp. The results are compared with the natural human force and yielded acceptable results. Finally, the hand is tested in term of canonical hand posture and manage to emulate actual human hand.