PNEUMATICALLY ACTUATED SOFT ROBOTIC PROSTHETIC HAND

Abstract

Conventional robotic prosthetic hands have been used for some time to give back specific functionalities to people who are either hand or arm amputees. However, these solutions are bulky, complicated, and do not reflect how a human hand would otherwise operate. As an alternative to these traditional robots, the field of soft robotics has sprung up, which utilizes soft and compliant materials to produce robots that closely mimic biological structures. A number of actuating mechanisms have been developed for this field, some of which utilize layers of hyper-elastic materials that deform and bend when subjected to pressure. Pneumatic networks (PneuNets) are one such development, which involve a hyper-elastic material with an embedded channel that can be pressurized, a series of these channels when put together undergo bending and deformation. This result has been utilized to develop prosthetic hands with fingers that closely resemble the functionality of real fingers. In this project, we have described the methodology of fabricating a soft robotic prosthetic hand using PneuNets. The goal of this project is to achieve a number of gripping states and analyze the statics and dynamics of the prosthetic hand.