X-limb: A soft prosthetic hand with user-friendly interface

Abstract

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. We have developed a soft prosthetic hand with features addressing the need of upper-limb amputees using soft robotics techniques. The designed hand is ultra-light and easy to manufacture. It is readily customisable for different hand size due to parameterised CAD design and using 3D printing techniques. The user-friendly control of the hand is achieved by using combination of designed-in behaviour of the finger and optimised movement of the fingers. This enables users to grasp a wide range of objects in one specific hand preshape eliminating the need for multiple switching between different grasps. The performance of the designed hand is evaluated throu..