4 / 2016-08-17 03:06:22

Development of Low-Cost & Lightweight 7-DOF Anthropomorphic Manipulator

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During this advance era of the 21st century, there has been a sharp increase in the numbers of amputees in the 3rd world and developing countries primarily due to war on terrorism, natural disasters, accidents and lack of proper medical treatments. In more recent times, war on terrorism has been the single major cause of amputations due to serious injuries sustained by victims therefore there is a need for an affordable solution to this appalling disability. This paper discusses a new 7 degrees of freedom (DOF) anthropomorphic manipulator design that resembles features of an actual human right hand. This paper also highlights various prosthetic hands that have been developed. The proposed prosthetic hand is light weight and has been manufactured using latest 3D print technology. Each finger of the hand possesses a single degree of freedom made possible by slider link mechanism where as the thumb incorporates spur and worm gears to achieve 2 degrees of freedom. Small gear driven motors have been installed inside the palm for the fingers while a high torque servo motor for the wrist mechanism. The motion of individual fingers is controlled by forward kinematics by accessing the angles of metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joints as the slider moves. For an adaptive grip, a control loop has been developed that can be interfaced with electromyography (EMG) or electroencephalogram (EEG) based sensors.