Development of a methodology for the experimental evaluation
and optimization of low-cost artificial hands.
Abstract:
The objective of the project is to establish a valid methodology to
evaluate experimentally and objectively the grip capacity of
prototypes of low-cost artificial hands, contributing to the
improvement and optimization of existing designs, with application
to the service robotics and hand prostheses. The prehensile capacity
of an artificial hand basically depends on three groups of factors:
its mechanical design, the performance of its actuators or motors
and the design of the control system. The project relies on the
hypothesis that it is convenient to uncouple these three groups of
factors to achieve an effective improvement of the design of
artificial hands. Thus, in a first stage it is convenient to
understand the effect of the mechanical design of the hand and for
this it is convenient a manual control of the prototype carried out
by a human operator. From this point of view, the significant
novelty proposed is the design of a test protocol of prototypes of
artificial hands operated by a human operator in a way that allows
the objective quantification of the prehensile ability and their
comparison with that of the human hand, obviating in this way the
differences due to the actuators or the control methods of each
artificial hand. This quantification is essential if the intention
is to move from the current design methods of trial and error to a
more objective approach that allows us to specify how a change in
the design of the artificial hand affects its prehensile capacity.
On the other hand, the use of the developed protocol will allow to
elucidate other questions of interest in the design and optimization
of artificial manipulators: the synergies used by a human operator
in the grip of an artificial hand, which will be very useful to
analyze the number of actuators or motors necessary for the control
this hand; the effect of different mechancical design parameters of
the hand on its prehensile capacity.
