Comparison of Human and Artificial Finger Movements

Abstract

The objective of this study is to quantify and investigate nonlinear motion of the metacarpal and proximal inter-phalange human finger joints, using tools of nonlinear analysis. The second objective is to compare the human finger movement with the cyclic movement of the artificial finger of an anthropomorphic hand-forearm system. The kinematic data of the flexion–extension angles for human and artificial finger were analyzed for two tests which differ by frequency. A time series was obtained for each test. For each time series the angular diagrams are obtained. The main spatio-temporal parameters of the performed tests are presented. Profiles of the phase plane portraits are determinate. For artificial finger joints the dominant frequency of both flexion–extension tests are calculated. For all time series, the human joints motion was characterized with the correlation dimension as nonlinear measure. The calculation of the correlation dimension was performed using the Chaos Data Analyzer software.