Pose Locking Prosthetic Hand – A Second Generation Prototype

Sammanfattning

Access to functional upper-limb prostheses in the Philippines is limited by cost, service capacity, follow-up and repair access, and reliance on imported or specialised components. This creates a need for lower-cost, mechanically simple, repairable prosthetic hands. This thesis aimed to improve and evaluate a low-cost, purely mechanical, passive-adjustable, underactuated prosthetic hand for a low-resource Philippine context. The final assembled hand, including the silicone glove, had a mass of 259.88 g, an estimated cost of 2443.48 PHP, and could be assembled with basic hand tools. With the glove fitted, mean holding load was 2.44 kgf for power grasp and 0.59 kgf for pinch grasp, while mean power-grasp slip resistance was 1.19 kgf. The prototype completed six of seven selected ADL-related tasks. Needs-matrix coverage increased from 12/41 linked metrics, or 29.27%, to 38/41, or 92.68%. The study produced a mechanically feasible and contextually grounded prototype with improved functional grasp performance and needs-matrix coverage. However, it remained at prototype feasibility level and was not user-ready. User performance, cosmetic acceptability, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance could not be concluded because participant-based testing was not completed. Further refinement is required before controlled user testing.