Design and Fabrication of an Efficient Automated

Prosthetic Above Elbow Joint with Body Powered

Gripper

Saqib Ahmed#1, Imran Khan, Saif Ullah, J. Iqbal, Z.Riaz

Department of Mechatronics Engineering

#
National University of Science and Technology (NUST) Rawalpindi Pakistan
1finalsuccess_8@yahoo.com

Abstract—In this paper we present the potential of applying attached to them is perfectly stuck or they feel as it is
“attached naturally” and the elbow motion as well. The more
our conceptual study on the prosthetic above elbow joint in
it is smooth, friction free ,less power consuming the best it is
particular with the extension of an available body powered
for the amputee. That exactly what our aim and driving force
gripper. Experimental results with the elbow product we have was to fabricate such a product for human benefit and service.
fabricated have shown desired efficiency level. Using a single
actuator with just a mere 12 volt supply we have optimized the
performance of the elbow joint keeping in mind the mechanical
design much “simpler and cheap enough”.

Keywords— AFIRM, Body Powered Gripper, spring

stiffness, Worm Gear, Actuation

I. INTRODUCTION
10,000 or more patients suffer from the Natural Amputation
of “above elbow extremity” every year in United States only
[1]. According to another statistics, 0ne out of every 300
individuals in United States suffers from Amputations and
23% of them are upper extremity amputations [2]. Although
with the advancement of technology, there are many jumps
taken in the field of the three streams orthotics, prosthesis
and bio-medical engineering too. The amputation may be
congenital (by birth) or acquired (from some accident, trauma
or disease) Above elbow amputation are indicated for
advanced coft tissue and bone sarcomas’ of the forearm[2].
The bone of sarcoma may be affected by any disease or by
birth. The coft tissue is the result of an accident caused by
trauma like cancer or a much malicious disease. People with
below elbow loss find it much easier and convenient to
change devices than the above elbow patients. But the above
elbow amputees find it the most convenient if the prosthetics
Fig 1. The reason for above elbow amputation .the sarcoma bone [3]
Still the cost of the prosthesis and the “ease of its use” are
bigger concerns for most of the patients. Bringing smiles on
the faces of such deprived by nature is a privilege indeed.
The gripper and below elbow prosthesis is an area in which a
huge research has been done. The field of above elbow
prosthesis and its bio-medical engineering needs special
attention. We developed a simple, efficient and durable
design of the above elbow arm with an available body
powered gripper using simple conceptual study of the
application of worm gears and the springs. For actuation
purposes the simplest of all DC motors were employed with
the application of limit switches. The calculations were
performed keeping in mind accurate and minute calibrations
predicted by MATLAB. The ease is kept in such a way that
the actuator can be easily replaceable and its operation much
simpler for the amputee. Nature is the most strongest of all
but at the end of the day man has to be the thinking character
to resolve the problem.
The paper briefly enlightens about the Mechanical design in
detail first in section II and then covers the actuation of the
product by the circuitry in section III. And at the end the
experimentation part encompasses the rigorous mathematics
involved briefly in section IV.
the end the load variation as well. The calculation were
helpful in determining the current variation with load and the
battery minimization to 12 Volys which we consider our
success as lifting an external load of 1.5 kg is indeed a
difficult task that too with a simple DC motor . Our
calculation will depict how our mechanical design led to the
goals achieved in the battery minimization and the current
requirements with the varying loads from, 200 grams to 1.5
kilograms.

II. MECHANICAL DESIGN

We begin our paper with the design we chose for the “ease of
use” point in mind as we visited the AFIRM (Armed Forces
Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine) institute. The gripper
really needs to be shape adaptive and body powered. Because
of the amputee really wants hooks; strings or very simple
mechanisms which are friendly and feasible for him.
Technically we performed the following using MATLAB.We
employed worm gear for our case with two reasons:

1. The requirement of torque was fulfilled by the worm

gears as its output torque is much higher since the speed
decreases and we know well the relationship of speed Fig 2. Suggested mechanical design
and torque; since the power has to remain constant.

2. Worm gears are most efficient in power transmission

and have very low power loss characteristic that makes
them perfect for its use in power transmission processes
in comparatively short centre distances[4].

The use of bearing had a particular effect on the stability and

friction removal effect on the shaft of the motor that we
employed in our case. The forearm and elbow connecting Fig 3. The available body powered gripper
rods were made hollow keeping in mind the weight factor in
mind. Finally comes the spring design and its placement for
the maximum “benefit” that can be taken out of the spring.
The elbow was made as much smoothly functional as
possible for an adequate load of about 1.5 kilograms. In our
case; Instead of using very complex, noisy and much
expensive myoelectric signals and feasible for him. That is
the reason we preferred to use the simple and easy to handle
the limit switches for our operation that have very less
probability of error and are much easier to handle with for the
amputee at least.The gripper in our case was available but
still it can be fabricated with much ease and it is an adaptive
gripper quite capable of picking and holding rigidly different
objects of different sizes and strength. This enhances the
capability of the product to move towards the object and grab
it. The advantage of using a body powered gripper reduces
the circuit to be attached and thus makes the product easy to
handle and less prone to errors or mishandling. The
mechanical design is determined and analyzed by its
componential diagram in Fig 2and the free body diagram Fig 4. Free body or Force diagram
shown in Fig. 3. The forces are kept in mind by calculating
the exact torques that will be produced by the forces and in
I. ACTUATION AND MICRO CONTROLLER
The actuation of DC motor is done with the help of a limit
switch to be attached to the assembly. The position of limit
switch is of vital importance since the amputee may not be
able to adjust the motor position and thus causing in the
malfunctioning of the whole setup for the DC motor ant its
control via the limit switch. Thus the reason for the position
of limit switch is of very vital consideration.
The micro controller employed in our case is PIC16F876A;
and the interface language is the MICRO C_PRO which is
particularly for PIC family micro-controllers. The micro-
controller has the states of limit switch as inputs and the
direction and p.w.m of the actuator as output.
The actuation is performed via limit switch through the micro
controller. The extreme positions of motor have two more
limit switches both on the upper and lower side of the arm
(for-arm and the above elbow unit). The motor in our case is
a simple brushless DC motor operated at 12 volts attached to
worm gear and its wheel gear resulting in the rotation of the
elbow joint.
The high state for the first time results in the motor actuation
and the rotation of the elbow. For the second time high state
of the limit switch the motion is ceased and the elbow joint
remains static until the limit switch is again pressed.
There are two more limit switches mounted at the extreme of
the motor trajectory for the most feasible operation. They
indicate the automatic stopping of the motor if they are
pressed .this is of much significance as the motor must stop
at the extreme positions on the the elbow action. The micro
controller pins are configured as inputs and outputs as desired
and the circuit is miniaturized as least as possible for the
optimization of the product. The circuit also has a relay
operated H-bridge for the reversal of direction.
A block diagram representation of the actuation can be as
under:
INPUT: LIMIT
SWITCHES PIC 16F876 A
STATE
H BRIGDGE
ACTUATOR
(DC
OUTPUTS: Direction +PWM
MOTOR)
Fig 5. Free body or Force diagram
II. EXPERIMENTATION
The data values of the weights of gripper, fore-arm, the gear
assembly and the motor attached were considered. These are
fed back in MATLAB for the calculation of effective torque
to be provided by the motor for the activation of the elbow
joint. External load Wex.load is varied from 0.5 kg to 2
kg.
The data values are as under:
1. Mass of forearm rod……0.16kg
2. Mass of ottobock gripper Wg……0.260. kg
3. Mass of adaptive gripper……0.210kg
4. For gripper weight variation of……0.140kg
5. Forearm C.G distance from elbow joint=0.181-
0.197m=1.6cm
6. Torque of elbow joint must be…3 Nm
7. Revolution per minute=10-15 rpm
“θ" is the angle of forearm with the horizontal and α is the
angle of upper arm with the vertical axis for the joint.the
relationship between“θ" and α; is given by:
α=r1r1+r2 (180- θ)
We employed second condition of equilibrium employed for
our calculations:
∑ Clockwise torques = ∑Anti-clockwise torques
Tforearmweight+ Tex.weight =Tmotor+Tspring (1)
Where
Tspring= FS_ver. r2 (sin (180 -θ-α)) (2)
Where l is normal spring length. There is no effective torque
produced from the horizontal component of the spring force
(FS_hor) as the line of action of force passes though the axis
of rotation. So we take into account the torque produced by
the vertical component of spring force (FS_ver).
The torque produced by the forearm rod weight is a torque
which does not vary with the external load as it is solely
dependent on the mass of the forearm rod which acts at the
centre of gravity of the rod. The red curve in both the Fig (6
(a) and (b)) shows the torque due the forearm rod
mathematically given by:
Tforearmweight = Wgd2 sin θ {sin (180- α- θ)} (3)
given by the torque by the variation of load is a varying
torque dependent upon the load attached and the angle θ; the
angle of forearm wiyh the horizontal.in our calculation tis
angle varies from 0 to 180 degrees.
Tex.weight = Wex.loadd sin θ {sin (180- α - θ)}
(4)
So equation (1) after the inclusion of values from (3) and It has been evident from the MATLAB plots that the motor
(4); takes the shape of: torque goes on increasing thus increasing the current
requirements for the DC motor. but what we need is the
motor to lie between its best efficiency value in its
( Wg2 + Wex.load ){Sin θ sin (180- α - θ)} TORQUE-SPEED curve. The spring so favours the motor
=Tmotor+Tspring (4) even we reduced the effective current drawn from spring by
“the favouring” torque for the motor from the spring.

FS= k x
(6)
The values were checked in a NESTED loop structure in MATLAB
for the optimization of spring constant k for spring.
As the parameters r1,r2remain costant during the
Whole trajectory of motion of the gripper ;
The extension “x” was found out by the law of cosines as;
x= r12+r22-2r1r2cosθ (5)
Our motor has a stall torque of 0.08 Nm with a no load speed
of 400rpm. When the gearing is done with a reduction ratio
of 1:40; the speed becomes 10 revolutions per minute ant the
torque reaches up to 3.2 Nm. Which is quite a healthy one
comprehensively serving our requirements as we need 2.4
Nm. We have optimized the motor characteristics in such a
way that our mechanical design does not require much more
than 2.1 Nm even for its maximum loads of 1.5 to 2 kg. Thus
we run the actuator which is the DC motor in safe and
efficient range for its long life and thus making the limb joint
durable.

II. LIMITATION AND FUTURE WORK

The need in the product is to increase the degree of freedom
of the elbow joint but still keeping it simple and effective.
The parameter of cost and weight should be kept in mind as
well. The product can be actuated via some other fast and
more quicker scheme other than the limit switches and also
shaft encoder motors can be used for the most optimum
working of the limb.

III. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We owe our specially indebting to Zohaib Riaz, lab engineer
Fig 6. (a) MATLAB plots for torques torques without whose guidance and a kind of brotherly behavior towards us
spring
in the completion of our work. We really feel short of words
for his contribution. Also Dr. Javed, head department Of
Mechatronics for his guidance and co-ordination.

IV.REFERENCES
[1] Paul Sugarbaker, Jacob Bickels; “Above Elbow and Below
Elbow Amputations”, Malware 1998
[2] Charles Pfiffer, Kathryn, Delaurentis “Shape memory alloy
actuated robot prosthesis” (2005)
[3] http://www.sarcoma.org/publications/mcs/ch18.pdf/
[4] http://www.rushgears.com/Gear_Types/wormGears.php

Fig 6. (b) MATLAB plots for torques with spring of desired value

I. RESULTS