Design and postural synergy synthesis of a prosthetic hand for a manipulation task

Recent advances in neurology showed that human controls muscles for hand poses in a coordinated manner. This coordination is referred as to a postural synergy. Using postural synergies, a few synergy inputs (usually two) can be used to control dozens of motors to accomplish various grasping tasks on a prosthetic robotic hand. This paper presents the latest results of a project which attempts to achieve delicate motions (e.g. manipulation of objects) on a prosthetic hand using two synergy inputs. In order to better reproduce the desired poses for the manipulation task, the postural synergies were synthesized on a kinematically identical dummy hand. The prosthetic hand was designed, fabricated and assembled. Tests were performed to qualitatively verify motion ranges of the prosthetic hand. Experimentation that follows is expected to demonstrate the completion of the intended manipulation tasks.