【Prosthetic Hands】07 First Generation - Integration, Integration, Integration!!

This article is about the integration of all my past designs.

    For the finger driving mechanism, I used wire to pull the phalanges. With the double-layered wire collector, I could make sure that the phalanges move just like how I designed.

    To reduce the size of the palm, I relocated the actuators to the forearm and put them in a stair shape so that the wire could pass with ease.

I also designed a linkage to enable wrist movement. To avoid the length change that was caused by the wrist movement affecting the tension of the wire, I designed the wire to pass the rotation axis of wrist joint.

    To control the hand with EMG signal, I utilized C++ to extract the motion recognition result by the MYO armband software and used these results to control the hand.

    For a prosthesis, it is quite important that it can work without external power, so I used 18650 batteries to serve as internal power storage. Aside from the actuators, I put all hardware (controller, Bluetooth module...) in the base of the arm.

    Finally, a case to cover all components was designed, with a hole so that I can see if all actuators were moving smoothly.

Beautiful! Isn't it?

In the final article of the first generation, there will be a series of demonstrating videos and the summary of the development of the first generation.