A design approach to the configuration of a prosthetic hand
Abstract
Purpose
This paper presents a method to elaborate the selections of these parameters to achieve stable grasps. The performance of a prosthetic hand is mainly determined by its mechanical design. However, the effects of the geometric parameters of the hand configuration and the object sizes on the grasp stability are unknown.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the thumb functions of human hands are analyzed based on the anatomical model, and the configuration characteristics of the thumbs for typical prosthetic hands are summarized. Then a method of optimizing the thumb configuration is proposed by measuring the kinematic transmission performance of robotics. On the basis of the thumb configuration analysis, a design method of the prosthetic hand configuration is proposed based on form closure theory. The discriminant function of form closure is used to analyze and determine the hand configuration parameters.
Findings
An application of this method – the newly developed HIT V prosthetic hand – elaborates the optimization of the thumb configuration and the hand configuration, where the relation between the key hand configuration parameters and the discriminant function on condition of satisfying form closure, sustained by analytical equations and graphs, is revealed and visualized. An experimental verification shows that it is an effective method to design the prosthetic hand configuration available for grasping typical objects in our daily life.
Originality/value
The paper shows how to easily determine the geometric dimensions of the palm, phalanges and hand configuration, so that the desired range of object sizes can be obtained.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work is in part supported by the National Program on Key Basic Research Project (973 Program, No. 2011CB013306, 2011CB013305), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51175106, 61203346) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Funded Project (No. 2013M540276, 2014T70316).
Citation
Jiang, L., Zeng, B. and Fan, S. (2015), "A design approach to the configuration of a prosthetic hand", Industrial Robot, Vol. 42 No. 4, pp. 359-370. https://doi.org/10.1108/IR-02-2015-0029
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited