title: The design of a modular voluntary opening prosthetic hand: ongoing research and preliminary results.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  This work presents the mechanical design of an artificial hand in order to address the need for a commercially feasible prosthetic hand.
  
  
  METHODS
  The hand has 3 compliant fingers and a thumb attached to a reconfigurable palm. The fingers and palm are a novel design, which is based on the natural arches of the hand. The design is modular, minimizing the number of parts and reducing assembly time.
  
  
  RESULTS
  This hand and the expandable socket are designed for transradial amputees. It has 9 degrees of freedom (DOFs), 2 of them for the reconfigurable palm. The kinematics and adequate excursion for the fingers and palm are illustrated by finite element method (FEM).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The study implements the mechanical parts by using rapid prototyping to assess preliminary results.
authors.affiliation: Production and Mechanical Design Department, Port Said University, Port Said - Egypt.
authors.forename: Mogeeb A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: El-Sheikh
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Engineering Department, Cairo University, Giza - Egypt.
authors.forename: Mona F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Taher
mesh_terms: D000674:Amputees; D001186:Artificial Limbs; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena / Q000502:physiology; D005385:Fingers / Q000502:physiology; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology*; D018737:Hand Strength / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D011474:Prosthesis Design