Abstract:
The human hand is an is an exceptionally significant part of the human body with a very
complex biological system having bones, joints, and muscles, to provide many degrees of
freedom. Among all the grasp patterns of hand, power grasping plays a crucial role in daily
activities of a human. During the past few years, there was a rapid development in prosthetic
limb technology to be used for the upper limb amputees. In this research, a prosthetic terminal
device has been developed to assist the power grasping activities of daily living ofupper limb
amputees. The designed terminal device includes four fingers, which generates eight degrees
of freedom. In order to generate finger movements, a novel linkage mechanism has been
proposed. Notably, the proposed mechanism can be characterized as a combination ofparallel
and series links. The mobility of the system has been analyzed according to ChebychevGriibler-Kutzbach criterion for a planar mechanism. By considering the easy fabrication, the
linkage finger mechanism was redesigned based on the design for manufacturing guidelines.
With the intention of verifying the effectiveness of the mechanism, kinematics analysis has
been carried out by means ofthe geometric representation and Denavit-Hartenberg parameter
approaches. Subsequently, a Matlab program has been developed, in order to proceed with the
numerical study. Furthermore, the motion simulation and static structural analysis proved that
the mechanism is capable of generating the required finger movements for power grasping.
Furthermore, trajectories and the configuration space of the proposed finger mechanism has
been determined by using the motion simulations inbuilt with Solidworks software package.
The movements of the finger mechanism, which is fabricated by 3D printing was
experimentally tested. Experimental results proved the effectiveness of the proposed
mechanism to accomplish the expected motion generation. In addition, the finite e
