Characteristics analysis and mechanical implementation of human finger movements

How to design a robotic hand reflecting human hand motion information as much as possible is a constantly exploring problem. In this paper, we propose an approach to mechanical design of compliant underactuated finger for prosthetic hand based on the decomposition of human hand movements. Hand movements are decomposed into primary and secondary motion in PCA coordinate system. The primary motion is achieved in free motion via actuators, and the secondary motion is implemented with mechanical compliance matching statistics characteristic of human motion data. Although analysis and design of single finger is always throughout this paper, the same method can be generalized to the whole hand design and the parameters design of other mechanical configuration.