title: Characterizing human hand prehensile strength by force and moment wrench.
abstract: Characterizing human hand capabilities or demand created by various occupational tasks or activities of daily living has been mainly accomplished by measuring the maximum force exerted on a force dynamometer in a number of standard grips, for example power, key pinch and tip pinch grips. A framework is proposed instead to characterize human hand prehensile strength in generic form by describing external force and moment wrench capability, where a wrench is a vector describing the forces and moments applied at a point. It is further suggested that if tools and activities are characterized by the internal forces and external forces and moments required, a better understanding of the human prehension in occupational settings and during activities of daily living can be obtained. An example of using a pistol grip drill is used to show the utility of the approach.
authors.affiliation: Department of Kinesiology, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, ON, Canada. wells@healthy.uwaterloo.ca
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Wells
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Greig
mesh_terms: D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D002965:Classification; D018737:Hand Strength / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009790:Occupations; D005082:Physical Exertion / Q000502:physiology; D004856:Postural Balance / Q000502:physiology; D014953:Wrist / Q000502:physiology*