• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.205-212
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• 2009

This paper proposes a biomimetic hand prosthesis with tendon-driven five fingers. Each finger is composed of a distal-middle phalange, a proximal phalange and a metacarpal bone, which are connected to a link mechanism. The finger flexion is a resultant motion by pulling a wire to serve as a tendon, but the finger extension is performed by an elastic mechanism composed of a restoration spring. The designed hand prosthesis with tendon-driven five fingers has totally six degrees of freedom. But its weight is merely 400.73g. The hand can perform various hand functions such as the grasping and the hand postures. From experimental results, we show that the proposed hand prosthesis is useful to amputees as a prosthetic hand.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.150-156
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• 2017

Background Digital amputation is a common upper extremity injury and can cause significant impairment in hand function, as well as psychosocial stigma. Currently, the gold standard for the reconstruction of such injuries involves autologous reconstruction. However, when this or other autologous options are not available, prosthetic reconstruction can provide a functionally and aesthetically viable alternative. This study describes a novel technique, known as a tripod titanium mini-plate, for osseointegrated digit prostheses, and reviews the outcomes in a set of consecutive patients. Methods A retrospective review of patients who underwent 2-stage prosthetic reconstruction of digit amputations was performed. Demographic information, occupation, mechanism of injury, number of amputated fingers, and level of amputation were reviewed. Functional and aesthetic outcomes were assessed using the quick disabilities of the arm, shoulder, and hand (Q-DASH) scale and a visual analog scale (VAS) score, respectively. In addition, complications during the postoperative period were recorded. Results Seven patients were included in this study. Their average age was 29 years. Five patients had single-digit amputations and 2 patients had multiple-digit amputations. Functional and aesthetic outcomes were assessed using the Q-DASH score (average, 10.4) and VAS score (average, 9.1), respectively. One episode of mild cellulitis was seen at 24 months of follow-up. However, it was treated successfully with oral antibiotics. No other complications were reported. Conclusions When autologous reconstruction is not suitable for digit reconstruction, prosthetic osseointegrated reconstruction can provide good aesthetic and functional results. However, larger series with longer-term follow-up are required in order to rule out the possibility of other complications.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.68-79
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• 2016

Electromyographic (EMG) signals have been widely used as motion commands of prosthetic arms. Although EMG signals contain meaningful information including the movement intentions of human body, it is difficult to predict the subject's motion by analyzing EMG signals in real-time due to the difficulties in extracting motion information from the signals including a lot of noises inherently. In this paper, four Ag/AgCl electrodes are placed on the surface of the subject's major muscles which are in charge of four upper arm movements (wrist flexion, wrist extension, ulnar deviation, finger flexion) to measure EMG signals corresponding to the movements. The measured signals are sampled using DAQ module and clustered sequentially. The Fuzzy C-Means (FCMs) method calculates the center values of the clustered data group. The fuzzy system designed to detect the upper arm movement intention utilizing the center values as input signals shows about 90% success in classifying the movement intentions.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.964-970
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• 2014

In this study we have developed an anthropomorphic robot hand and arm by using tendon-tubes which can be used for people's everyday life as a robot's dynamic power transmission device. Most previous robot hands or arms had critical problem on dynamic optimization due to heavy weight of power transmission parts which placed on robot's finger area or arm area. In order to resolve this problem we designed light-weighted robot hand and arm by using tendon-tubes which were consisted of many articulations and links just like human's hand and arm. The most prominent property of this robot hand and arm is reduction of the weight of robot's power transmission part. Reduction of weight of robot's power transmission parts will allow us to develop energy saving and past moving robot hands and arms which can be used for artificial arms. As a first step for real development in this study we showed structural design and demonstration of simulation of possibility of a robot hand and arm by tendon-tube. In the future research we are planning to verify practicality of the robot hand and arm by applying sensing and controlling method to a specimen.