Biomechatronic Approach to a Multi-Fingered Hand Prosthesis

The development of a biomechatronic hand with multi-FSRs (Force Sensitive Resistor) interface is presented. The cambered palm is specially designed to enhance the stability while grasping. The opposite thumb could grasp along a cone surface, while maintaining its function. By taken the advantage of coupling linkage mechanism, each finger with three phalanges could fulfill flexion and extension independently. Besides, each finger is equipped with torque and position sensors. Thus, the cosmetics and dexterity are improved remarkably compared to commercial prosthesis. The hardware architecture is hierarchically organized as control system and human-machine interaction system. To evaluate the performances of the hand, the pattern reorganization experiment based on support vector machine (SVM) was conducted. The results show that FSR sensing technology is suitable for muscle activity detection; Compared to nearest neighborhood classifier, SVM method improves the predict success rate. Moreover, it also demonstrates that the hand is dexterous and manipulates like human.