Abstract
The authors have been developing power assisted hands for cervical spinal cord patients. The latest model (PA-Hand No.3) which assists patients to grasp the objects is of 500gf weight. This is still too heavy for patients to use comfortably in daily life. To reduce the weight, the authors replaced air actuators with artificial muscle actuators. The target of this study is to satisfy the following specifications; (1) Weight; under 150gf, (2) Function; three-finger pinching for small objects and grasping bottles of 500gf in weight. This paper firstly describes trial production before completing PA-Hand No.4. Several trials were made to complete the products by improving poor functioning. During this stage, several experiments were also conducted. The final product, PA-Hand No.4, satisfied the above specifications.
