Design and control of a coupling mechanism-based prosthetic hand

Abstract

A five-fingered, multi-sensory and biomimetic hand is presented. The cambered palm is specially designed by utilizing the knowledge of anatomy. The position of each finger is arranged according to human hand skeleton. Each finger with three phalanges could fulfill flexion-extension movement independently. All the fingers are designed using coupling link mechanism. The location of the thumb is designed by maximizing interaction area between the thumb and other fingers. The opposite thumb could grasp along a cone surface, while maintaining its function. The hardware architecture is divided into control system and human-machine interaction system. The mechanical parts, sensors and motion control systems are integrated in the hand structure. In addition, a skin-like glove is designed, which makes the hand more humanlike. According to our primary experimental results, the hand can accomplish several grasp modes by applying an intuitive surface electromyography control scheme. The success rate of 10 modes is up to 90%.