A Sustainable & Biologically Inspired Prosthetic Hand for Healthcare

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

An Optical-based Fingertip Force sensor

This work introduces the design and prototype development of a novel optical-based fingertip force sensor, which is integrated in a bio-mimetic finger for robotic and prosthetic manipulation. Given the optical nature of the sensor, the proposed device is free of any electrical and metal components. Accordingly, the design improves manipulation of objects with high electromagnetic compatibility performance, reducing sensor’s susceptibility in the presence of these disturbances. The sensor has inherently high SNR and low-power consumption. The concept of using simplified and low cost optical based fingertip force sensor for bio-mimetic anthropomorphic fingers has not been widely implemented so far. The sensor is based on a cantilever design combined with a couple of fiber optics and a reflective surface, it is integrated on the distal phalange of a novel bio-mimetic and anthropomorphic robotic finger. Sensor design was performed and optimized throughout a 3D printing process and Finite Element Analysis. The sensor’s sensitivity (0.098V/N), resolution (0.01N), accuracy (3% of full scale output (FS)) and hysteresis (9.24% of FS) were characterized through a calibration processes. Various applications like surgical manipulation or handling in harsh environment (i.e. high voltage, high temperature and explosive environments) will benefit from the proposed sensor’s performance, reliability, simplicity and bio-compatibility

Fibre Optic-Based Force Sensor for Bio-Mimetic Robotic Finger

A novel optical-based fingertip force sensor, which is integrated in a bio-mimetic finger for robotic and prosthetic manipulation is presented. This is used to obtain tactile information during grasping and manipulation of objects. Unlike most devices the proposed force sensor is free of any electrical and metal components and as such is immune to electromagnetic fields. The sensor is simple and very compact, has extremely low power consumption and noise levels and requires no additional hardware. It is based on a cantilever design combined with fiber optics and is integrated on the distal phalange of a robotic finger. The unique design of this sensor makes it ideally suited for use in messy or harsh environments that may be prone to electromagnetic fields, granular or liquid intrusion, may include combustible gasses or be subject to radiatio

Wearable Haptics for VR Stiffness Discrimination

In this work, we introduce an integrated multi-finger wearable haptic setup which discriminate the stiffness of virtual objects. The overall setup is made of an Oculus Rift (Oculus VR, LLC) combined with a Leap Motion controller (Leap Motion, Inc) and five ERM vibro-tactile actuators, for the virtual immersion, the hand tracking and the 5-fingers haptic feedback, respectively. This setup is integrated with a Unity Game Engine customised software simulating stiffness of virtual objects and returning modulated amplitude of electrical signals for the vibro-tactile actuators on the end-user fingers. The system is under development for applications such as surgical training and pre-operative planning