New optimum humanoid hand design for prosthetic applications

To address the need for a commercially feasible prosthetic hand, the current work presents the design of a new humanoid hand actuated using shape memory alloy (SMA) artificial muscle wires. The hand has 3 compliant fingers and a thumb attached to the palm. The palm structure is a novel design, which is based on the natural arches of the human hand to provide better grasping capabilities. A compact actuator module is proposed to house and cool the SMA wires. Design parameters of the hand were selected to maximize the work density. The hand is lightweight, low cost, and operates silently. It has functional opening and closing speeds and fingertip force.