Feb 16 2011
Ashish Deshpande, Mechanical Engineering Professor at the University of Maine, has been offered a grant worth $512,000 by the National Science Foundation for developing an advanced robotic prosthetic hand. Deshpande is also a director of the Rehabilitation and Neuromuscular (ReNu) Robotics Lab.
The robotic design features very small links, wires, sensors and motors. The researcher focuses on including biology in the prosthetic hand for enabling it to precisely mimic the motion of a human’s hand, wrist and fingers. Tendons, muscles and ligaments of a human hand offer bounciness and control. Deshpande believes that including these inert properties in the robotic hand will be a major breakthrough in the prosthetics segment. He is also looking forward to including various levels of pressure and movement in his robotic design. For instance, an egg can be held by a human hand without damaging it and the hand varies the pressure depending on the object to be held.
The task of including these biological properties to the robotic arm has been made simple by means of a high-end camera and sensors equipment in the ReNu Robotics lab. The system can record and assess human motions. Recently, Deshpande and his associate performed an investigation with the help of 20 volunteers and they focused on researching the biomechanics of a moving human hand.
The next step of his research will be to link the robotic hand to the brain by neurological methods. The researcher has mentioned that his ultimate focus is to enable the hand to be easily controlled by human thoughts. However, the method of connecting the prosthetic hand to the nervous system is yet to be discovered.
Source: http://www.umaine.edu