Hey everyone!

The fourth week of the internship was focused on more brainstorming. Although we had hoped to transition towards modeling and prototyping by the start of the week, there were several more features of our design that required more in-depth consideration and planning. The first of these areas was in determining how we will redesign the anchors of our “tendon” cables that run through our fingers. The purpose of this modification is to remove the mechanism around the wrist while still maintaining the strength that having tensioned fishing string provides. We eventually came up with several ideas to accomplish this including bolting the anchors to the back of the palm component, tying the cables around the base of the palm, or even removing the cables altogether. As shown in the image below, we conducted low fidelity testing on a few of these ideas and have tentatively decided to go without the cables. However, there is more testing that needs to be done before we make our final decision.

Other components we spent time brainstorming were the gauntlet and palm-cover redesigns to better secure the prosthetic to his hand. We noticed that his hand would often slip out of the palm area due to the lack of support around his wrist, so we primarily aimed to resolve this issue with this round of brainstorming. A few of these modifications can be seen below. We extended the palm cover down the gauntlet so that his wrist was fully secured to the device and added cushioning between the palm and gauntlet to better support his wrist during extension.

This week, I got to spend a lot of time with my teammates discussing various ideas and testing methods, and I really enjoyed getting to know them better. We even went out for ramen together after work!

Even though this post was a bit late, I hope you all enjoyed seeing our progress!

Alex