Developing a body-powered co-contraction equivalent: Applied to switch between a lateral and an opposition grip

Myoelectric as well as body-powered hand prostheses, the two commercially available prosthetic control types, have both their specific advantages. Advanced myoelectric prostheses for example have the characteristic of facilitating multiple degrees of freedom due to grip type variation and/or wrist movements. Compared to prosthetic devices with...

Design and evaluation of a new passive adjustable prosthetic hand comprising a novel control method

Master-thesis work on the design and evaluation of an adaptive passive hand prosthesis, with a novel control method.

Design of a Hydraulic Prosthetic Hand: Adding an active thumb to the Delft Cylinder Hand

Body Powered Hand Prostheses provide the user with a replacement for a missing hand. Current body powered hand prostheses are inefficient and require large input forces for the control. Improvements are needed to provide amputees with adequate body powered hand prostheses. The Delft Cylinder Hand, a promising design for an underactuated...

The Lightweight Delft Cylinder Hand, the First Multi-Articulating Hand That Meets the Basic User Requirements

Rejection rates of upper limb prostheses are high (23-45%). Amputees indicate that the highest design priority should be reduction of the mass of the prosthetic device. Despite all efforts, the mass of the new prosthetic hands is 35-73% higher than that of older hands. Furthermore current hands are thicker than a human hand, they operate slower...

Comparison of mechanical properties of silicone and PVC (polyvinylchloride) cosmetic gloves for articulating hand prostheses

Current articulating electric and body-powered hands have a lower pinch force (15–34 N) than electric hands with stiff fingers (55–100 N). The cosmetic glove, which covers a hand prosthesis, negatively affects the mechanical efficiency of a prosthesis. The goal of this study is to mechanically compare polyvinylchloride (PVC) and silicone...

Natural grasping, design and evaluation of a voluntary closing adaptive hand prosthesis

Replacement of a missing hand by an artificial alternative remains one of the biggest challenges in rehabilitation. Although many different terminal devices are available, around 27% of the amputees does not actively use their device and 20% totally refrains from wearing it. There are various reasons for prosthesis abandonment, e.g. wearing...

Efficiency of voluntary opening hand and hook prosthetic devices, 24 years of development?

Quantitative data on the mechanical performance of upper-limb prostheses are very important in prostheses development and selection. The primary goal of this study was to objectively evaluate the mechanical performance of adult-size voluntary opening (VO) prosthetic terminal devices and select the best tested device. A second goal was to see...

Handschoencompensatiemechanisme

Rapport Nr. N-270 - Handprothesen worden vaak bedekt met een cosmetische handschoen om op deze manier de kunsthand een zo natuurlijk mogelijk voorkomen te geven. Een nadeel van deze handschoen i s echter dat deze bij het openen van de kunsthand een tegenwerkend koppel levert. Om deze tegenwerking op te heffen wordt gezocht naar een mechanisme...

Belastbaarheid van de menselijke huid op druk- en schuifkrachten

In deze skriptie worden resultaten uit de literatuur op het gebied van de mechanische belastbaarheid van de menselijke huid behandeld. Daarbij wordt alleen gekeken naar die belastinggevallen, waarvan verwacht kan worden dat ze bij het dragen van pro- en orthesen zullen voorkomen: drukkracht (eventueel negatief) loodrecht op de huid en...