Development of Multi-Fingered Prosthetic Hand Using Shape Memory Alloy Type Artificial Muscle

A new prosthetic hand with a fixed thumb and four fingers actuated by Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) type artificial muscle has been developed in this paper. Different from typical geared motor, SMA actuator is lightweight and silent, however shows a little short stroke and small attracting force per each unit. In order to achieve enough output force and motion range of each finger, multiple SMA type artificial muscles with special device which facilitates enough length are equipped in the hand. The fundamental properties of the SMA type artificial muscle including output force and electrical response were determined experimentally and considered for the design of hand mechanism. Besides, the structure of each finger and whole system has been designed based on observation of human hand. The electrical hardware to control multiple shape memory alloy type artificial muscles has been also developed. Finally, the usefulness of the prosthetic hand has been investigated through experiments for grasping several types of objects.