Robotic hand: A review on linkage-driven finger mechanisms of prosthetic hands and evaluation of the performance criteria

Abstract Mechanical design of an artificial finger is the key factor in determining the performance of a prosthetic hand. To achieve a simple, dexterous and functional bionic hand, researchers have argued that two main requirements should be incorporated in developing an artificial finger: (i) an anthropomorphic structure and (ii) the capability of grasping objects in a stable and secure way. This paper first considers the existing body of literature on the various performance criteria used for prosthetic fingers. These criteria are classified into a) grasp and b) physical characteristics. To this end, various perspectives of existing papers on prosthetic finger's features such as shape-adaptivity, natural motion, stability, force isotropy, workspace, and weight are considered. Furthermore, existing linkage-driven fingers of hand prostheses are reviewed. For this purpose, relevant articles published between 2000 and 2019 were searched, and a total of 28 linkage-driven mechanisms from about 280 papers were selected and assessed based on the performance criteria. Finally, according to the intended use of a prosthetic hand, this paper suggests some key considerations needed for developing an anthropomorphic artificial finger.