Mechanical Design and Assessment of a Low-Cost 7-DOF Prosthetic Arm for Shoulder Disarticulation

Abstract EN

This work presents the design of a low-cost prosthetic device for shoulder disarticulation.

A proper design of the mechanisms has been addressed to obtain a prototype that presents 7 degrees of freedom.

Shoulder movement is achieved by means of a spherical parallel manipulator, elbow movement is performed by a six-bar mechanism, and the wrist movement is implemented by a spherical parallel manipulator.

A set of dynamic simulations was performed in order to assess the functionality of the design.

The prototype was built using 3D printing techniques and implementing low-cost actuators.

An experimental evaluation was carried out to characterize this device.

The result of this work is a prototype that weighs 1350 g that is able to perform movements related to activities of daily living.