Design and manufacture of 3D printec myoelectric multi-fingered hand for prosthetic application

Abstract

Multi-fingered robotic hand plays a very important role as it is required to hold and place the object at the desired location. Extensive research work is under way in the design of Multi fingered or anthropomorphic hand. Exhaustive survey of all such hands convey the idea of higher and higher sophistication with innumerable components and elaborate controls with programmable ability has been the outcome of research. In this paper, we present an innovative design, simple to manufacture and low cost 3D printed myoelectric multi-fingered hand for prosthetic application. Servomotors coupled with pulleys and strings are used for actuation of fingers. This prosthetic hand is developed to study trans-radial amputees. The hand features human like fingers along with thumb roll mechanism which is driven by low weight servo motors. The hand is controlled by Arduino nano whose signal is powered by myoelectric sensor and the whole circuit is powered by 12V rechargeable battery. The fabricated hand is tested to study some of the human grasps by imitating the human actions and the results are presented.