The design of a modular voluntary opening prosthetic hand: Ongoing research and preliminary results

Abstract

Introduction: This work presents the mechanical design of an artificial hand in order to address the need for a commercially feasible prosthetic hand. Methods: The hand has 3 compliant fingers and a thumb attached to a reconfigurable palm. The fingers and palm are a novel design, which is based on the natural arches of the hand. The design is modular, minimizing the number of parts and reducing assembly time. Results: This hand and the expandable socket are designed for transradial amputees. It has 9 degrees of freedom (DOFs), 2 of them for the reconfigurable palm. The kinematics and adequate excursion for the fingers and palm are illustrated by finite element method (FEM). Conclusions: The study implements the mechanical parts by using rapid prototyping to assess preliminary results.