A GearDriven Prosthetic Hand with Major Grasp Functions for Toddlers This paper presents a geardriven prosthetic hand designed for toddlers with transradial amputation. The hand design considers three main issues: weight, cost, and operability. The prosthetic hand and the cosmetic silicon glove are made based on the dimensions of a real hand. The simple, stable, and reliable geardriven transmission helps to reduce the weight and the cost. A small actuator is embedded in the palm. During the grasp, the four fingers and the thumb flexes and extends as a unit to provide a wide range of holding area. The kinematics and static analysis in grasping was performed and the simulation results were compared with measured data. The motion performance and practical operability of the proposed hand was verified experimentally by a test system and a transradial subject.

Lightweight 10DOF Robotic Hand With BuiltIn WireDriven Mechanism The purpose of EMG prosthetic hands is to compensate for the lost functions of hand amputees. To restore the ability to perform activities in daily life, prosthetic hands need to have as many a degrees of freedom (DOFs) as possible. Furthermore, this requirement must be realized while retaining grasping stability and keeping the hand light in weight and small in size. In this study, our aim is to develop a 10DOF hand that can form the seven finger postures that are required for daily life activities. To achieve this objective, we propose a wiredriven mechanism built over a finger skeleton and implemented it on a hand. We confirm that the developed hand can achieve all of the goal actions. In addition, our developed hand was evaluated using two indices, rate of controllability and rate of weight, as defined in this research.