Prosthetic Gripper with a Powered Wrist

Abstract

Prosthetic grippers with 1-2 independently actuated DoFs offer a potentially lightweight, robust, and inexpensive solution that is easier to control than powered prosthetic hands. This makes them an attractive option for many amputees. A frequently overlooked feature of upper limb prostheses is the wrist. The human wrist has 3 rotational DoFs that all offer important capabilities. In many cases, prosthetic hands either have no wrist, a manually adjustable wrist, or have 1-2 actively actuated DoFs. These wrist options can present significant inconvenience for the user that impacts overall usability of the entire prosthesis. This is an important issue because an excellent prosthetic hand paired with a poor prosthetic wrist (in weight, size, speed, strength, etc.) will lead to the user facing several challenges that may lead to outright rejection of the overall system. The aim of this project is to design a novel prosthetic gripper and pair it with a novel powered prosthetic wrist. This combination will provide amputees with a lightweight and low-cost prosthesis with improved capabilities that addresses several common complaints that users have.