Human Hand Anatomy Research Articles

A Bio-Impedance Analysis Method Based on Human Hand Anatomy for Hand Gesture Recognition

In this article, we presented a bio-impedance analysis method (BIAM) based on the human hand anatomy and propose a feasible and flexible BIAM system to obtain the bio-impedance signals for different gestures to achieve a high classification accuracy in hand gesture recognition with flexibility in electrode arrangement and fewer electrodes. To verify the proposed method, 11 gestures, including two sets: hand gestures and pinch gestures, were selected for the experiment. Based on the functional structure of the human hand, we identified appropriate electrode positions and placed five electrodes on the hand surface for bio-impedance signal measurement. Compared with the electrical impedance tomography (EIT) method, which uses a band with the same number of electrodes wrapped around the wrist, the proposed method achieved 98.7% recognition accuracies on the hand gesture set and 97.8% on the pinch gesture set, while the EIT achieved only 97.1% and 86.3%, respectively. In particular, the proposed method demonstrated the advantage of distinguishing gestures with similar muscle contractions.

Human Hand Anatomy-Based Prosthetic Hand.

The present paper describes the development of a prosthetic hand based on human hand anatomy. The hand phalanges are printed with 3D printing with Polylactic Acid material. One of the main contributions is the investigation on the prosthetic hand joins; the proposed design enables one to create personalized joins that provide the prosthetic hand a high level of movement by increasing the degrees of freedom of the fingers. Moreover, the driven wire tendons show a progressive grasping movement, being the friction of the tendons with the phalanges very low. Another important point is the use of force sensitive resistors (FSR) for simulating the hand touch pressure. These are used for the grasping stop simulating touch pressure of the fingers. Surface Electromyogram (EMG) sensors allow the user to control the prosthetic hand-grasping start. Their use may provide the prosthetic hand the possibility of the classification of the hand movements. The practical results included in the paper prove the importance of the soft joins for the object manipulation and to get adapted to the object surface. Finally, the force sensitive sensors allow the prosthesis to actuate more naturally by adding conditions and classifications to the Electromyogram sensor.

The manual pressures of stone tool behaviors and their implications for the evolution of the human hand

It is widely agreed that biomechanical stresses imposed by stone tool behaviors influenced the evolution of the human hand. Though archaeological evidence suggests that early hominins participated in a variety of tool behaviors, it is unlikely that all behaviors equally influenced modern human hand anatomy. It is more probable that a behavior's likelihood of exerting a selective pressure was a weighted function of the magnitude of stresses associated with that behavior, the benefits received from it, and the amount of time spent performing it. Based on this premise, we focused on the first part of that equation and evaluated magnitudes of stresses associated with stone tool behaviors thought to have been commonly practiced by early hominins, to determine which placed the greatest loads on the digits. Manual pressure data were gathered from 39 human subjects using a Novel Pliance® manual pressure system while they participated in multiple Plio-Pleistocene tool behaviors: nut-cracking, marrow acquisition with a hammerstone, flake production with a hammerstone, and handaxe and flake use. Manual pressure distributions varied significantly according to behavior, though there was a tendency for regions of the hand subject to the lowest pressures (e.g., proximal phalanges) to be affected less by behavior type. Hammerstone use during marrow acquisition and flake production consistently placed the greatest loads on the digits collectively, on each digit and on each phalanx. Our results suggest that, based solely on the magnitudes of stresses, hammerstone use during marrow acquisition and flake production are the most likely of the assessed behaviors to have influenced the anatomical and functional evolution of the human hand.

Mani-Pull-Action

The human hand dexterity provides a natural and rich interface for computer interaction. Technologies for tracking hand and finger motion are now accessible and can be used with a minimum computation power for the manipulation of virtual puppets in real-time. However creating an intuitive hand-based motion con- trol interface presents problems such as, mapping the hand to an object that demands more degrees of freedom or to assign gestures that are difficult to memorize or to execute. We propose an ergonomic hand- mapping model for digital puppetry, based on the human hand anatomy and biomechanics, adapting tradi- tional puppetry methods. A cinematic virtual puppetry application was developed supporting distinct in- teraction styles based on the hand dexterity skills. An experiment using the Leap Motion controller was conducted to evaluate the hand mapping feasibility. The participants considered that the proposed interface provides a good level of directness. Furthermore, a custom interface for smartphones was combined with the application to extend the puppet manipulation and show control operations.

Intrinsic Muscles of Human-like Robotic Hand using McKibben Actuators

This paper presents the intrinsic muscles of a Human-like Robotic Hand (HR-Hand), with a focus on dorsal interossei and palmar interossei muscles. Three links of palmar and four links of dorsal interossei muscles were fabricated according to human hand anatomy using 1.3 mm thin McKibben actuators. The experimental result using single index finger shows that the robotic hand could achieve palmar adduction and dorsal abduction and assist in flexion of fingers that imitate the actual function in the human hand.