Robotic Hand

How we created a robotic hand out of basic materials and a bit of code

Styrofoam, fishline, elastic bands, exacto knife, hot glue gun, paper clips, wire cutters and servo motor

We got all the supplies listed above than started measuring the length, width, and height of all fingers, palm, wrist and forearm. Once we had the dimensions for the fingers we started to measure the length in between the joints.

We used a marker to mark the outline of the fingers and after cut out them using an exacto knife.

Sand paper was used to sand down the sides of the fingers, palm and wrist making it more smooth and less blocky. Once the fingers were sanded the joints of the fingers were cut to make the fingers able to bend.

We used a needle and string to push threw the Styrofoam fingers and once pushed threw the string was tied off on the tip of the finger. The back end of the string goes threw the palm of the hand and is held down by paper clips along the wrist..

We used the hot glue gun to stick elastic bands to the back of the fingers. This is used to extend the fingers after being contracted and also keeps the fingers aliened.

We tied strings to the motors than glued the motors to the forearm of the hand. The motors are used to extend and retract the fingers without manually needing to pull the string.

This is one of the most important parts of the hand, this is what makes tells the motors to move. Without this the hand wouldn't be able to be automated and therefore is the most important step. Since this was such a large part of the project we had 1 person whos job was just to code to ensure it worked well without any issues. One wrote the code so that the pointer finger and thumb are able to make a pinch motion.