Digital Twin of a 7-Dof Bionic Arm

Bionic arm industries face a lot of challenges in relation to optimal thickness of the arm, bending stress development in the arm, torsional stress in critical components etc. A Digital Twin will be extremely helpful in this regard. In this project, a Digital Twin of a 7-DOF Bionic arm which is voice controlled is created on Simscape Multibody platform. Apart from imparting mass and inertia properties, the digital twin also incorporates forward and inverse kinematics model of the 7-DOF bionic arm, joint limits, serial port communication with the physical counterpart and the digital twin is fitted with a mannequin for simulation of different tasks. Besides, the digital twin is used for joint space trajectory planning, determination of bending stress in the fore arm, determination of torsional stress in critical elements, determination of optimal thickness and determination of optimal load that the bionic arm can lift. Since, the bionic arm is developed for an upper arm amputee, there are 7 degrees of freedom- 5 for the 5 fingers, one for the wrist and one for the elbow. Since the bionic arm is intended to operate with voice commands, for the simultaneous control of the twins, voice control module is used in physical twin and communication between the fabricated physical and the virtual model is established through serial communication.