Prosthetic Hand for designers to experience by MacGyvrBot

Last crawled date: 2 years, 11 months ago

The Modular e-NABLE Research Platform (MeRP 1.0) is a modified wrist-actuated prosthetic hand that can be worn by able-bodied people for use in their day-to-day activities. This allows prosthetic hand designers to improve their designs by actually using the products they design. Designers can share the experience of people who will use products they create.
The MeRP 1.0 straps onto the user’s forearm with a “gauntlet” that supports a prosthetic hand below the user’s hand. The user actuates the fingers of the prosthetic by flexing his/her wrist which causes the prosthetic hand to move, and strings running through the prosthetic fingers like tendons cause them to create a grasping movement.
The modular nature of the MeRP 1.0 allows the user to try different designs of hands, fingers, thumbs, gauntlets and actuating mechanisms to evaluate the pros and cons of each design. For more information about the e-NABLE prosthetic hands that are created on 3D printers and provided to children (free of charge), see http://enablingthefuture.org/. http://youtu.be/OOjgTNgoRB8
Credits:
A remix of https://www.youmagine.com/designs/rit-e-nable-arm-v0-43#!design-information. The MeRP 1.0 design was based on a prosthetic arm designed at Rochester Institute of Technology by e-NABLE volunteers and on other open-source designs shared within the e-NABLE community.