Design and analysis of a tendon-driven 2 DOF elbow prosthesis hybrid mechanism

This paper presents a new mechanical architecturefor elbow powered myoelectric prostheses. New requirements for active prostheses are energetic autonomy, low production cost and human like behavior. On the scientific panorama very few examples of parallel device are available. We show an alternative device, with a simple mechanical hardware, to simulate the movements and the dynamic of human elbow. We investigated on wires used like tendons in mechanical elbow prostheses. The wire transmission architecture allows two linear actuators to control the motion of the forearm along two degrees of freedom in an enhanced work volume. The device, indeed, is designed to provide in the same mechanism flexion/extension and pronation/supination movement, which are usually decoupled in elbow and wrist mechanisms in usual commercial devices.