Research on Upper Extremity Prosthesis based on Human Motion Analysis : Development of Internally Powered Functional-cosmetics Prosthetic Hand

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to propose a cosmetics and an internally powered functional prosthetic hand with a voluntary closing function, which has been developed by using robot manipulator technology. From electromyographic and three dimensional video analyses of human grasping movements, we found that, if the wrist joint is fixed and the thumb moves in a diagonal direction, the compensatory movements of the trunk and upper extremity decreases. The experimental results demonstrate that the thumb movements of flexion and radial abduction play an important kinematic role in human grasping movements. Then, a new mechanism for an internally powered functional prosthetic hand that can drive five fingers with metacarpophageal joints and proximal interphalangeal joints of the fingers by a single cable is proposed. Tendon transmission in the proposed mechanism is useful for the hand to drive the finger joints. We suggest the following results; (1) the hand we developed has passive compliance, and (2) it can grasp objects with a cross section of different diameters.