Week 4 - Change in Initial Design

Throughout the past week, it was decided that our group was being too ambitious in our design proposal. Therefore, from now on we will be focusing on a more specific design to perform specific jobs. In other words, as of now, our goal was to assist people with hand tremors perform daily tasks. However, there are many problems with trying to do so because there are many factors that need to be overcome. For example, our gripper initially wasn't designed to relieve tremors that begin in the upper arm- we were solely focusing on the forearm. If someone was trying to use our gripper to reach something from a cabinet in their kitchen, they would still be unable to hold their arm steady because although their forearm may be more controllable, their forearm is still shaking. Because of the complications with trying to help individuals with hand tremors perform all daily activities, our group will focus on assisting these individuals with only one type of activity. We will be focusing on creating a gripper that will help individuals use a key to open a lock and turn a doorknob in order to open a door.
In addition, materials have not been obtained in order to build the initial prototype. While waiting for materials to come in, a simpler 3D model was constructed out of paper. This is simply a model with no functions and does not have any abilities to perform tasks that the initial prototype will be designed to perform. Figure 1 shows the gripper from the front, with the fingertips in view. This is where magnets will be attached.

Figure 1: Frontal view of glove

Figure 2 shows how the gripper fits onto a persons hand. It is not possible to have a universal glove that will fit everyone. Since most people have hands of different sizes, gloves need to be custom designed to fit one's hand. This is a constraint in our design. In the figure below, the glove was made to fit the hand of one of our group members.

Figure 2: View of how the glove is worn

Week 3- Initial Design and Materials

After refining our solutions, we have come up with an initial design for the exoskeletal gripper. The diagram below shows the initial design, but only for two fingers. The actual prototype will cover a full hand; the diagram below only shows the beginning of our design. 

Figure 1: Initial sketch of the exoskeletal gripper

The materials necessary to build a prototype of this design were also refined. A tentative list of materials includes: a soldering kit, rings to use as hinges, copper wire, and magnets. For this project, an actual design will not be made. Only a prototype model that does not have the full functions of our project will be constructed. Figure 2 shows a basic soldering kit which seems sufficient for our group to build our initial prototype. The brass rings to use as hinges, spool of copper wire and magnets are shown in Figures 3 to 5 respectively. The hyperlinks for the purchasing sites for the following materials are located in the project overview section under materials within the subsector named projected budget.

Figure 2: Soldering Kit [4]

Figure 3: Brass Rings [5]

Figure 4: Copper Wire Spool [6]

Figure 5: Roll of Magnets [7]

Material Procurement will be completed by the end of next week. The pictures of materials posted are not the exact materials that will be used in the project.

Week 2- Constructing Project Proposal

Since our group is aiming to assist individuals with hand tremors, we thought we would look into real people experiencing hand tremors in order to design our product accordingly. From these videos, we decided to focus on minimizing shaking due to hand tremors, and assist individuals to grasp objects and perform daily activities more efficiently.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEM9OiWveS4&feature=related

The man notes it is very difficult to grip objects. For example he has trouble keeping a cup of coffee steady to drink from or to hold a bolt in order to srew into a solid object. The video is used along with other videos to gain background knowledge of the tremor from primary sources and experts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E26GsUSjvdw

Similar to the man in the video above, this woman also has difficulty grasping object due to hand tremors.

After viewing the videos, we discussed possible solutions and decided to focus our efforts into creating an exoskeletal gripper that individuals would be able to wear in order to relieve hand tremors. Refining must be done on these solutions in order to fit design constraints and follow deliverables.

Week 1- Deciding Freshman Design Project

The choice of topics ranged from fabricating electrospun chitosan polymer membranes for filtration applications to remote operated submersible for water quality testing and finally to human assist-devices for disabilities or rehabilitation. Our group chose to pick the topic of human assist devices with the concentration on developing a product to help control hand tremors. The range of all of our majors brings a lot to the table, allowing us to think up designs for the project with someone majoring in biomedical engineering, a related field on developing replicated body parts, mechanical engineering to help put the assembly together for the prototype, all the way to computer engineering, to help sketch and produce a three dimensional model of the design using Pro-Engineer WildFire. Our initial goal for this project is to research upon this topic of hand tremors and develop a basic solution, to help resolve this issue. Once that is completed, we will go on to building a prototype and testing it and modifying its design, allowing the solution to be as much user friendly as possible.