Characterizing human hand prehensile strength by force and moment wrench
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Published on: June 16, 2021
1Department of Kinesiology, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, ON, Canada. wells@healthy.uwaterloo.ca
Abstract:
Characterizing human hand capabilities or demand created by various occupational tasks or activities of daily living has been mainly accomplished by measuring the maximum force exerted on a force dynamometer in a number of standard grips, for example power, key pinch and tip pinch grips. A framework is proposed instead to characterize human hand prehensile strength in generic form by describing external force and moment wrench capability, where a wrench is a vector describing the forces and moments applied at a point. It is further suggested that if tools and activities are characterized by the internal forces and external forces and moments required, a better understanding of the human prehension in occupational settings and during activities of daily living can be obtained. An example of using a pistol grip drill is used to show the utility of the approach.
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