Paper:
Realistic and Highly Functional Pediatric Externally Powered Prosthetic Hand Using Pneumatic Soft Actuators
Hironari Taniguchi*, Nobuo Takemoto*, Ren Yakami*, Shuichi Wakimoto**, Takero Oshikawa**, Kosuke Morinaga***, and Takefumi Kanda**
*Osaka Institute of Technology
1-45 Chayamachi, Kita-ku, Osaka City, Osaka 530-8568, Japan
**Okayama University
3-1-1 Tsushima-naka, Kita-ku, Okayama City, Okayama 700-8530, Japan
***Hiroshima International University
555-36 Kurose-Gakuendai, Higashi-hiroshima City, Hiroshima 739-2695, Japan
It is known that introducing a pediatric externally powered prosthetic hand from an early age has certain merits such as the recovery of body image. However, this process is not popular in Japan. The high cost and technological problems of the hand have resulted in difficulty in its popularization. The pediatric prosthetic hand must be lighter and smaller than the adult one. Furthermore, parents of users prefer a prosthetic hand, such as a human arm and hand. We developed a prosthetic hand that demonstrates certain functionalities and appearances similar to a real human hand. The prosthetic hand consists of miniature McKibben actuators and is manufactured from acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene resin and covered by a silicon glove. It has flexible joint structures and can grasp objects of various shapes. In this paper, we present a prototype of the pediatric prosthetic hand and the results of gripping experiments, bending and extension of finger experiments, and user tests.
- [1] U. G. Froster-Iskenius and P. A. Baird, “Limb reduction defects in over one million consecutive livebirths,” Teratology, Vol.39, pp. 127-135, 1989.
- [2] H. Taniguchi and T. Ban, “An Externally Powered Prosthetic Hand with Flexible Fingers for Children,” Proc. of JSME Annual Conf. on Robotics and Mechatronics (Robomec), 2A2-H02, Fukushima, Japan, 2017 (in Japanese).
- [3] H. Taniguchi, A. Hashimoto, and M. Nakagawa, “Design of a functional prosthetic hand for children using novel shape memory alloy actuators,” Proc. of JSME Annual Conf. on Robotics and Mechatronics (Robomec), 1P1-02b3, Yokohama, Japan, 2016 (in Japanese).
- [4] H. Taniguchi, A. Hashimoto, and S. Izuhara, “Development of an externally powered below-elbow prosthetic hand for children – Design and fabrication of externally powered prosthetic hand and wrist –,” Int. J. of Innovations in Engineering and Technology, Special Issue on ACEIAT & JTSTE – Thailand 2014, pp. 57-63, 2015.
- [5] X. Jing et al., “Anthropomorphic Prosthetic Hand with Combinaion of Light Weight and Diversiform Motions,” Appl. Sci., Vol.9, p. 4203, doi:10.3390/app9204203, 2019.
- [6] H. Kawasaki and T. Mouri, “Humanoid Robot Hand and its Applied Research,” J. Robot. Mechatron., Vol.31, No.1, pp. 16-26, 2019.
- [7] X. Yong et al., “Design and Implementation of Arch Function for Adaptive Multi-Finger Prosthetic Hand,” Sensors 2019, Vol.19, p. 3539, doi:10.3390/s19163539, 2019.
- [8] Y. Nemoto, K. Ogawa, and M. Yoshikawa, “F3Hand: A Five-Fingered Prosthetic Hand Driven with Curved Pneumatic Artificial Muscles,” Proc. Annual Int. Conf. of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC2018), Hawaii, USA, pp. 1668-1671, 2018.
- [9] T. Kobayashi, M. Yoshikawa, K. Ogawa, S. Ohmatsu, and N. Kawashima, “Compact and Lightweight Transradial Electric Prosthesis for Children with Forearm Deficiency,” Proc. Annual Int. Conf. of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC2019), Berlin, Germany, pp. 6665-6668, 2019.
- [10] T. Hirai, S. Togo, Y. Jiang, and H. Yokoi, “Development of EMG prosthetic hand for infant with lightness and high pinch force,” 15th IEEE Int. Conf. on Advanced Robotics and Its Social Impacts (ARSO 2019), SaCT1.5, Beijing, China, 2019.
This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationa License.