Development of an electromyographic smart prosthetic hand

Abstract: Losing a hand is a highly traumatic experience affecting both the physical life and mental wellbeing of a person. It is therefore vital to provide a prosthetic hand with similar functionality to the hand lost. The human hand is a very delicate and complex part of the body used every day in a wide range of tasks from performing heavier works to smaller gestures. Due to all factors playing arole in how amputees live their lives, recreating a human hand is a very demanding and challenging task. As many as 30% of amputees experience depression and/or anxiety as a result of not having the same capabilities and opportunities as before the amputation. Amputation may be carried out both due to sudden accidents and as a result of congenital defiances and vascular illnesses. Since advanced prosthetic hands often come in at a price too high to reach a large part of the amputee consumer base, the case is often that only the richest amputees are able to afford electric prosthetic devices, and are thus often limited to simpler, body-powered alternatives. These alternatives are often found to be lacking in features and resemblance when comparing to the more technologically advanced electric prosthetics. A set of product development tools and methods were selected for the development process to ensure an organized approach for the project. The project was concluded with a finished and fully-manufacturable prosthetic hand with some advantages compared to the current market products. The hand developed in the project, named OYMotion hand 1.0 proved to have a number of advantages over competing products in selected functional areas such as force, finger speed and weight. The final market price of the product could not be estimated due to the fact that there are too many unknown factors involved to determine a final market price on the hand. The production cost is, however estimated to be significantly lower than the measured competing prosthetic hands. A deepened understanding about prosthetic hand design and development was obtained by studying the market, EMG, machine learning applications, hardware, gears, finger mechanisms,and materials.  By balancing concepts between cost, functionality and aesthetics, a structured reasoning couldbe used to prioritize certain aspects of the developing of the hand.The completed hand fulfills the required specifications and functions after undergoing anumber of analyses conducted in order verify material strength and mechanism functionality.Further grip strength analyses and calculations were excluded from the study due to the limitedavailable time given.