A study of human hand tendon kinematics with applications to robot hand design

Current trends in robotics are pointing to the design of dextrous manipulators patterned after human hands. This article reports on some studies of the human hand and how it relates to the design of anthropomorphic manipulators. We discuss hand anatomy and a mathematical model that relates tendon displacement to joint angle. This enables the understanding of the role of the tendons in normal hand function as well as in disability. This information may be used to design robot or hand prosthesis tendons after their human counterparts. We present an example of a shape memory alloy actuator based design. The actuators emulate human tendon mechanisms.