A Sustainable & Biologically Inspired Prosthetic Hand for Healthcare

E. Secco; C. Moutschen; T. Agidew; A. Nagar

Research Article

A Sustainable & Biologically Inspired Prosthetic Hand for Healthcare

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@ARTICLE{10.4108/eai.13-7-2018.155080,
    author={E. L.  Secco and C. Moutschen and T. F. Agidew and A. K. Nagar},
    title={A Sustainable \& Biologically Inspired Prosthetic Hand for Healthcare},
    journal={EAI Endorsed Transactions on Pervasive Health and Technology},
    volume={4},
    number={14},
    publisher={EAI},
    journal_a={PHAT},
    year={2018},
    month={7},
    keywords={smart prosthetics, human-centred healthcare, sustainability, bio-mimetic},
    doi={10.4108/eai.13-7-2018.155080}
}

E. L. Secco
C. Moutschen
T. F. Agidew
A. K. Nagar
Year: 2018
A Sustainable & Biologically Inspired Prosthetic Hand for Healthcare
PHAT
EAI
DOI: 10.4108/eai.13-7-2018.155080

E. L. Secco¹^,*, C. Moutschen¹, T. F. Agidew¹, A. K. Nagar¹

1: Robotic Laboratory, Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, Liverpool Hope University, Hope Park L16 9JD, UK

*Contact email: seccoe@hope.ac.uk

Abstract

There are many persons in the world affected by amputation. Upper limb amputations require high cost prosthetic devices in order to provide significant motor recovery. We propose a sustainable design and control of a new anthropomorphic prosthetic hand: all components are modular and exchangeable and they can be assembled by non-expert users. Phalanges & articulations of the fingers and the palm are manufactured via a 3D printing process in Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) or Polyactic Acid (PLA) materials. The design is optimized in order to provide human-like motion and grasping taxonomy through linear actuators and flexion tendon mechanisms, which are embedded within the palm. HardWare (HW) and Software (SW) open sourced units for ElectroMyography (EMG) input and control can be combined with a user-friendly and intuitive Graphical User Interface (GUI) to enable amputees handling the prosthesis. To reduce the environmental impact of the device lifetime cycle, the material and energy consumption were optimized by adopting: simple design & manufacturing, high dexterity, open source HW and SW, low cost components, anthropomorphic design.

Keywords: smart prosthetics, human-centred healthcare, sustainability, bio-mimetic

Received: 13th Mar 2018
Accepted: 13th May 2018
Published: 23rd Jul 2018
Publisher: EAI

: http://dx.doi.org/10.4108/eai.13-7-2018.155080

Copyright © 2018 E.L. Secco et al., licensed to EAI. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unlimited use, distribution and reproduction in any medium so long as the original work is properly cited.