Prosthetic Robotic Hand: Mechanical Design, Contact-mechanics Modeling, and Experimental Investigations

The human hand is a complex apparatus. Losing a hand is an extremely traumatic event that changes forever one?s life. To replace the human hand with a mechanical analogue is therefore difficult. It is simpler, as with traditional robotics, to replace individual functions with manipulators of different configurations rather than use a single multi-functional device. This book is targeted mechanical design, contact-mechanics modeling, and experimental investigations of robotic hand for prosthesis. This book is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 is an introductory chapter. Chapter 2 presents a review of historical introduction of prosthetics, mechanisms, and mechanical contact modeling in robotic hands. Chapter 3 concerns with the theoretical analysis of a prosthetic robotic hand. Also, this chapter deals with the modeling of contact mechanics and nonlinear stiffness for hemicylindrical soft fingers contacts. Chapter 4 presents the experimental work involving the method of manufacturing a prototype robotic hand for prosthesis. Furthermore, experiments are conducted to validate the theory of the power-law equation. Results & conclusions are presented in chapter 5 &6.