Design and Implementation of DUFAB Hand, A Low-Cost Myoelectric Prosthetic Hand

In this paper, the design and implementation of a low-cost myoelectric prosthetic hand prototype are presented. Our main contributions are - (i) proposing a new Computer Aided Design (CAD) suitable for laser cutter for prosthetic hand and (ii) a new feature, XCORR that calculates cross-correlation between two channels of EMG signals for same gesture, is introduced to classify Electromyography (EMG) signals. Individual parts are designed in a 2D plane and assembled to make a 3D structure in CAD software. Acrylic is used as the main material. The prosthetic hand can exhibit 6-degree of freedom (DOF), i.e., six gestures which are required to perform essential daily tasks and grabbing objects. Commonly used features, such as SMAT, HJORTH parameters are extracted from raw EMG signals and combined with newly introduced feature XCORR to classify 6 types of individual and combined finger movements. Using the classified EMG signal as input we have controlled the designed prosthetic hand in both simulation and hardware level. The controller is designed in such a way that the angular displacement of each finger meets a predefined angle value for each classified gesture. For classification of EMG signals, the highest accuracy is observed as 93.9% with a low computational load. The proposed hand will be affordable and suitable for amputees and help them regain their ability to work.