3D Printed Robotic Hand: Part 1 -- Project proposal

April 7, 2015: Gerardo Ramos

Purpose/Goal:

The purpose of this project is to learn to use a 3D printer and to further my skills in using the Arduino. My goal is to have a functional hand that will mimic my hand movements through the use of a glove with flex sensors attached to it. The robotic hand will be assembled out of 3D printed parts from files that were obtained from an open source project called InMoov.

Initial Design Concept:

The design of the hand is already pre-made from the project InMoov that provides all the 3D printable files. The other part of this project would be just a glove where I will attach flex sensors and a LilyPad Arduino placed on top of the glove.

Materials:

Glove; about $5

5 4.5 inches flex sensors for the fingers, $12.95 each from Sparkfun.com

A LilyPad Arduino Board with 6 analog inputs, $19.95 from Sparkfun.com

A LilyPad FTDI adapter to program it, $17.95 from Sparkfun.com

A XBee module for radio communication, $24.95 from Sparkfun.com

A LilyPad XBee shield to connect the XBee module, $14.95 from Sparkfun.com

5 47K ohms resistors, can get some for free from my school.

Battery Pack for 3 1.5V batteries with switch, $1.95 from Sparkfun.com

List of materials for the robotic hand:

3D printed hand from files, free

An Arduino Uno, have one already from previous project.

Another XBee Module, $24.95 from Sparkfun.com

5 Servos, TowerPro SG90,  $22.63 with shipping from shopshiphappy.com

Or approximately $15 from dx.com

A Servomotor Shield, $17.5 from Adafruit.com

A shield to connect the XBee module for Arduino Uno, $14.95 from Sparkfun.com

Fishing wires to connect the servos to the fingers, find some lying around

A 9V battery, find one lying around.

Budget:

For the budget, I found all the prices of the parts for this project and decided to mostly find them from Sparkfun.com to lower costs of shipping and to probably create an account to possibly save money. I am going to get the servo shield from Adafruit.com. The total costs of the parts listed above will be $229.53. This cost could possibly increase a little more because shipping charges from Adafruit.com for the servo shield.  Shipping will be free from Sparkfun.com because shipping is free for orders over $75.

Timeline/Delivery Dates:

After getting all the parts I will try my best to work on it. It will all depend when the parts will arrive. If all the parts that I ordered from SparkFun.com come first, I will be able to work on the glove part of the project since all the parts necessary for the glove will be coming from Sparkfun.com. The servo shield and the servos will come from different places so I will not know if they will come first before the parts from Sparkfun.com. The amount of time I think I will take to work on this project will be about 2 months to be conservative. While I wait for parts, I can start typing up the code for the LilyPad on the glove and the Arduino for the robotic hand. I still have to print 3D parts of the hand so I can do that do while I wait for the parts. But my main goal is to finish as soon as possible to bring more content and to start on a whole new project that will possibly include the use of bearings.