ORCID Identifier(s)

0000-0003-0947-6489

Graduation Semester and Year

2018

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

First Advisor

Panayiotis S Shiakolas

Abstract

The human thumb is the first digit of the hand and influences the grasping capability of the human hand. Based on literature, most sensor gloves available capture the motion of the fingers, however, they lack the ability to capture the motion of the thumb. This research focuses on developing a methodology and associated hardware to capture the complex joint motion of the thumb and map it to an in-house developed multi-degree of freedom robotic thumb. A sensor device was developed to measure four joint angles of the human thumb, namely three flexion/extension (flex/ext) joint angles of carpometacarpal (CMC), metacarpophalangeal (MCP), and interphalangeal (IP) joints, and one abduction/adduction (abd/add) of CMC joints. A kinematic model was developed to map the measured joint angles to a robotic thumb by implementing numerical inverse kinematic approach. The sensor device was used to control the simulated model of the robotic thumb. Additionally, telemanipulation of the robotic hand was implemented using the developed sensor device along with the already developed flex-glove. The developed sensor hardware and methodology could measure the human thumb motion and control the in-house developed robotic thumb.

Keywords

Artificial thumb, Forward kinematics, Inverse kinematics, Human thumb motion capture

Disciplines

Aerospace Engineering | Engineering | Mechanical Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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