Recent advancements in prosthetic hand technology

Abstract

Recently, significant advances over the past decade have been made in robotics, artificial intelligence and other cognitive related fields, allowing development of highly sophisticated bio-mimetic robotics systems. In addition, enormous number of robots have been designed and assembled by explicitly realising their biological oriented behaviours. To enhance skill behaviours and adequate grasping abilities in these devices, a new phase of dexterous hands has been developed recently with bio-mimetically oriented and bio-inspired functionalities. The aim in writing this review paper is to present a detailed insight towards the development of the bio-mimetic based dexterous robotic multi-fingered artificial hand. An “ideal” upper limb prosthesis should be perceived as a part of their natural body by the amputee and should replicate sensory-motor capabilities of the amputated limb. Upper-limb amputations are most often the result of sudden trauma to the body, although they also can be caused by malignancy, congenital deficiencies and vascular diseases. This paper discusses the different bio-mimetic approaches using a framework that permits for a common description of biological and technical based hand manipulation behaviour. In particular, the review focuses on a number of developments in the inspired robotic systems. In conclusion, the study found that a huge amount of research efforts in terms of kinematics, dynamics, modelling and control methodologies are being put in to improve the present hand technology, thereby providing more functionality to the prosthetic limb of the amputee. This would improve their quality-of-life and help in performing activities of daily living (ADL) tasks with comparative ease in the near future.

Keywords:

• Prosthetic
• bio-mimetic
• artificial hand
• robotics
• amputee

Acknowledgements

This study is funded by a research grant (Ref: BT/532/NE/TBP/2013) from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India to the University. The authors acknowledge the support of all volunteers who participated in the study.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Table 1. Work done in the field of prosthetic hands to date.

Figure 1. Developed robot hand by Lee et al. [2].

Figure 2. The Zurich–Tokyo hand, as inspired by the muscle–tendon system of the human hand.[3] (Left): Hand structure. (Middle and Right): Final grasp of different objects.

Figure 3. SQUSE lifelike robot hand.[4]

Figure 4. I-LIMB ULTRA hand, a formal way to categorise grasps.[6]

Figure 5. Southampton Remedi Hand with six independent movements.[15]