Smart, Secure and Sustainable Robotic Hand

Abstract

Robotic manipulators have a wide range of applications in many sectors from automation to medical surgery. Since decades, researchers and developers have been proposing creative designs in leveraging specific applications or to demonstrate proof of concepts in bespoke scenarios. This paper presents a novel smart, secure and sustainable framework for the design of a 3D printed robotic hand. The smart robotic hand, consisting of two elements: i) a userwearable glove and ii) a mechanical hand, is a seamless entity in which the movement of the mechanical hand is controlled by the user-wearable glove. A real-time communication between the glove (server) and the mechanical hand (client) is facilitated through a secure wireless client-server model running on a commercially available microcontroller making it light-weight and cost-effective. In order to promote sustainable 3D printing, a conscious decision was taken to use recyclable and biodegradable Polylactic acid (PLA) based wood filament for the casing of the mechanical hand as well a cotton and linen based material for the user glove.