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LifeMOD in Research: Accelerating Robotic Hand Development

Client: 
Several university researchers
Challenge: 
The movement of the human hand is a very complex interaction of active and passive forces. Robotic hands are still a long way from matching the grasping, dexterity, and manipulation capability of human hands. In an effort to further understand of the human hand and accelerate the development of robotic hands, LifeModeler engineers put LifeMOD™ to work on the hand’s grasping mechanism.
Solution: 
A detailed human hand was developed in LifeMOD and used to perform a grasping exercise. The hand adapted to the shape of the grasped object through the modeling of the surface contact forces between the object and the complete metacarpal chains. The complex relationship between the active muscle-tendon forces and the passive elasticities resident in the hand were studied. The model was validated by loading the tendons of cadaver hands, observing the finger behavior, and comparing this behavior to model predictions.
Value: 
The forces generated internally within the hand while performing the grasping exercise provided data to drive a robotic hand in a similar fashion. This data, which cannot easily be obtained from an actual human experiment, will help researchers reduce the number of physical prototypes necessary for the development of robotic hands.

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