This past weekend I've been at the Madrid Mini Maker Faire 2016 giving a talk about Dextra and showing it to the fair visitors. It was a lot of fun and it also served as a stress test for the hand; until now, it had not been running for such a long time....
Today I have been working on the integration of the EMG control (using Mumai) with the latest version of Dextra. EMG control was already implemented in the first Dextra prototype, but it was not yet implemented in the current version of Dextra, the one...
One of the things that I still had to do was to calculate the total cost of Dextra. As I say in the project description, Dextra is a low-cost robotic prosthesis, but how low?ComponentPcsUnit priceSubtotalPololu Micro Metal Gearmotor 1000:1 HP with extended...
Exciting news! I've struggling for months with the design of the fingers on the bionic hand. I haven't been able to get the force needed to operate the finger low enough. I always intended to use tendons to actuate the fingers, and springs or elastic...
I am aiming to finish this early as I need all the parts for the final build of the prosthetic hand. This will be the ultimate build to put a smile on some lucky kids face.The necessity of a reusable higher performance EMG is paramount for any legitimate...
One of the most common applications of EMG signals in the research field is to use them as inputs of machine learning algorithms to classify gestures performed with the hand. These classifiers are very useful to control robotic hand prostheses with more...
In 1948 Arne Tiselius received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "for his research on electrophoresis and adsorption analysis, especially for his discoveries concerning the complex nature of the serum proteins".Electrophoresis is a method for the separation...
If you are interested in Microfluidics the Princeton Microfluidics Laboratory is a great place to start. No matter where your reading may take you you will find numerous reference to the use of SU-8 as a way of making master molds for the casting of...
Perhaps you were driving down the road one day, arm out the window, enjoying the day and you later found yourself waking up in a hospital in this situation. Bummer.So if you had a really nice, prosthetic arm, how exactly are all those servo motors and...
Update: September 2ndWe set up the arm rig to stress test some batteries. Great news! we may be able to rely on some pretty light and small batteries!With the goal of keeping the prosthetic robotic arm as light as possible, we intend to use the lightest...
Super Excited today. Lorelei and I figured out how to reliably get a signal from her arm to control the robotic prosthetic! (Disclaimer the video and lighting is poor but I was just excited to quickly show you all).Background: Up until now we have been...
In order for the group to figure out what our initial steps in designing a prosthetic foot are going to be we must brainstorm. Below is the brainstorming that we did in order to figure out the direction we would like to take this project towards.Aluminum...
The group started its research by searching for how current prosthetic feet were being analyzed to find potential problems that could be solved. This initial research posed several questions to the group. Was carbon fiber truly the best material for...
The group decided to record a video of our 75% infill compression sample being compressed. This gave the group a more in depth insight into the buckling nature of the part failure. After printing the individual components of the full scale model, the...
The first step in controlling our prosthetic foot is balance. The question we face is, how can we create a simple control system to govern balance? The group chose to use a fixed adaptive PID control which increments the values on the PID based on the...