Design of a Fully Compliant Under-Actuated Finger with a Monolithic Structure and Distributed Compliance

Design of a Fully Compliant Under-Actuated Finger with a Monolithic Structure and Distributed Compliance

Steutel, P.

Herder, J.L. (mentor)
Kragten, G.A. (mentor)

Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering

BMechE

BMD

2010-01-13

The majority of existing problems within conventional prosthetic fingers are related to the use of conventional rigid links and kinematic joints and to the lack of adaptability of the finger. In this paper these problems are solved by the design of a fully compliant under-actuated prosthetic finger. At first a basic structure was defined. Subsequently a Pseudo Rigid Body method was used for a type synthesis and rough dimensional analysis in order to determine the topology of the conceptual design. In order to evaluate the grasping behavior of the conceptual design, four mock-ups were created. Detailed dimensioning design was performed by semi automatic numerical analysis using a finite element method in which the conceptual design was used as an initial input. A prototype based on this final design was manufactured and experimentally evaluated. It was found that utilizing the concepts of under actuation and compliance solved the identified problems within conventional prosthetic fingers. As a result of the design process and the use of a predefined structure a fully compliant underactuated finger with a monolithic structure and distributed compliance was obtained. In addition to the application field of prosthetics the design shows potential of being applied in the field of robotics and graspers.

prosthetics
fingers
compliance
under-actuation
Pseudo Rigid Body method
Finite Element Analysis
monolithic structure

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:390da42e-3b5e-4505-bb46-0f8821d4a8f3

2011-01-13

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2010 Steutel, P.