Design and development of an experimental claw-grip, forefinger simulator. Part I: Kinematics

The evolution achieved in the development of robotic hands in recent years solves a few problems. It has allowed to copy the aesthetic and mechanical behavior of the healthy limb, yet still limited to applications to test prototypes. On the other hand, some disadvantages are: the equipment used to generate these devices is too large, heavy, noisy and difficult to mount on reduced space just as the joint of the hand. In this work, the main aim is to develop the movement of two fingers, the thumb and forefinger, since this carry out the most of the important functions of the hand and since their movement is at least as complex as that of the other three fingers. To be able to reduce the mechanism of action of the finger, the simplified kinematics was used, being based on the equations of Denavit & Hartenberg which eliminate the redundancies in the movement parameters. After having solved the equations using a program made in Math Lab™, the solutions of kinematic parameters, such as position, speed and others were obtained. There tools used to design and build the hand such computational CAD/CAE and 3D models printer will be mentioned. It is important to mention the tools that were used to design and to build the hand, such as computational software CAD/CAE software and 3D models printer. Finally, the results obtained were satisfactory and the prototype was built.