The prime objective of this research is to design, fabricate, and test an actuator for an artificial human hand. Current artificial hands have attempted to provide the required dexterity, however, the current actuator systems employed are extremely limited and yield subpar performance. The key to creating effective artificial hands is a light weight actuator. Actuators made from piezoelectric materials will be used to resolve many of the problems of current systems. These materials are light and compact, and the piezoelectric actuator can be placed at the joint thereby eliminating some important problems while producing better control of the hand. A number of alternative designs for a piezoelectric actuator will be developed. Analytical models will be developed for each design and an optimum design will be sought using the gradient search optimazation technique. Experiments will compare the performance of artificial hand and the human hand. Response time, dexterity, compliance and controlability are characteristics that will be analyzed. Issues concerning the capability of groups of piezoelectric actuators to function together and to handle reasonable payloads will be addressed.
