MEMS Prosthetic Hand
As an Undergraduate Research Assistant at UBC's MEMS Lab, I developed a tendon-driven prosthetic hand for research applications — exploring bio-inspired actuation and grasping strategies through iterative mechanical design, rapid prototyping, and MATLAB/Arduino integration.
What
- Developed a tendon-driven prosthetic hand for research applications at UBC's MEMS Lab
- Explored bio-inspired actuation and grasping strategies
- Analyzed 15+ existing tendon-driven prosthetic hands to identify common successful design elements
How
- Designed and 3D-printed iterative mechanical prototypes using a custom-built multi-extrusion 3D printer running RepRapFirmware
- Integrated the hand with a Kinova Jaco2 robotic manipulator and evaluated grasp performance
- Developed custom shell and Python scripts to integrate Git-based version control with SOLIDWORKS for collaboration
- Built a demonstration platform using MATLAB and Arduino with a Leap Motion hand-tracking camera to mimic human hand gestures
Results
- Produced a fully functional prototype demonstrating reliable tendon actuation
- Achieved 25% better grasping performance than previous design iterations
- Delivered a working gesture-mimicking demo platform
Skills
- SOLIDWORKS
- 3D Printing
- MATLAB
- Arduino
- Python
- Git
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