An actuated artificial hand made of compliant material has been developed. The five fingers are articulated and are actuated using the underactuated approach and specific components for the transmission mechanism. The actuator can be integrated inside the palm. Two electromyographic electrodes have been used to control the opening and the closing of the hand.
The main features of this artificial hand are:
- Low cost fabrication and maintenance;
- High cosmetics appearance;
- Adaptable grasping capabilities;
- Simple control strategies;
- Low control burden for the user;
- Anthropomorphic kinematics.
The above listed features make this artificial hand suitable for prosthetic applications.
The artificial hand and the control strategies have been described in detail in three conference papers:
M.C. Carrozza, G. Cappiello, G. Stellin, F. Zaccone, F. Vecchi, S. Micera, P. Dario, "A Cosmetic Prosthetic Hand with Tendon Driven Under-Actuated Mechanism and Compliant Joints: Ongoing Research and Preliminary Results", in Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2005), Barcelona, Spain, April 2005, pp. 2672-2677.
M.C. Carrozza, F. Zaccone, S. Micera, G. Cappiello, G. Stellin, F. Vecchi, P. Dario, An adaptive prosthetic hand with compliant joints and EMG-based control, in Proc. of MEC 05 Integrating Prosthetics and Medicine, August 17-19, 2005, pp. 62-68.
M.C. Carrozza, G. Cappiello, G. Stellin, F. Zaccone, F. Vecchi, S. Micera, P. Dario, "On the Development of a Novel Adaptive Prosthetic Hand with Compliant Joints: Experimental Platform and EMG Control", International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2005).
An Italian Patent (NoLU2003A000012) has been requested on September 15, 2003.