VISVESWARAYA TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

BELAGAVI - 590014, KARNATAKA, INDIA

Project Report
on

“VOICE CONTROLED PROSTHETIC ARM FOR HUMAN”

By

1. Adarsh. GS 4JD17ME005
2. Gagan. N 4JD18ME019
3. Kirankumar bellatti 4JD18ME026
4. Koushik vittal shet 4JD18ME028

Under the guidance

of
Dr. Raghavendra Reddy. NV BE, MTech, Ph.D.
Professor

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Jain Institute of Technology
DAVANGERE-577 003
2020-21
ABSTRACT:

In the present world, the number of amputee cases is rising every year, which needs to be resolved.
Currently many different types of prosthetic arm, which are medically certified, are around the
market. These are either too expensive or don’t satisfy the needs of the patients to the fullest. In
this paper, we provide a technological advancement for the arm by enabling voice control and even
manage to cut down the cost of the electronic and mechanical equipment required in building a
working prototype of the prosthetic arm. Our prototype resembles the functional structure of the
biological human arm. Most of the complex movements of the arm and hand is made possible by
achieving near perfect replication of the movements of the biological human arm. The joints of the
fingers on the prosthetic arm have been modelled based on the biological human fingers to replicate
all the actions typically obtainable by any human finger. The prototype of the prosthetic arm
presented here doesn’t rely on the biological signals from the nerve endings of the residual arm in
the human body, hence it can easily replace the prosthetic arm which rely on phantom limb, as the
human brain loses the phantom limb sensation after a period of about six to eight months. In this
paper, we have specifically tackled this above problem and even provided an advancement in the
form of voice control commands to the robotic prosthetic arm which we modelled using
economical devices and equipment to cut down the heavy cost of affording a prosthetic arm.

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Literature review:

1. Prosthetic, An artificial body part. Essentiality of prosthetic hand was arise when a person lost
his/her any body part in accident, war, disease or may be result of failure in surgery. Human
prosthetic hand is blissful for amputee person. Human prosthesis is not a new process, it is very
old. The first ever human prosthetic was done between 950-710 BC in Egypt. And it was not a
leg, hand, finger, arm or fake eye it was toe of human being. Then as time passed, new
inventions and development are going in this field. Human prosthesis, a journey starts from toe
and now a days we can able to do prosthesis most of every human body part. 6
2.
3. Initially development in this field was very slow, but if we consider the progress in human
prosthesis in last two centuries was quite good. Now a days we can able to do prosthesis of the
arm, leg, hand, fingers, fake eyes, ears, nose and also internal body part i.e. bones, vertebra
column, knee joints, hip joint etc. As from that we can say that prosthesis is very old technology
and people are adopting this technology to fulfil their own intension.
4. While doing literature survey and patent research work, we found that, at initial stage it was
just an artificial hand. It would use only for the aesthetic purpose. People who lost their body
part adopt prosthesis science to just make a static artificial body component. There are many
research papers available from earlier time period. Where people do research on prosthetic
technology and develop the static prosthetic human body part. Particularly we focused on the
prosthetic human hand in our literature survey, and research and development work in the
prosthetic human hand field was quite improving. Starting from static prosthetic human hand
i.e. artificial hand, hook prosthetic hand, split hook prosthetic hand to the dynamic prosthetic
hand i.e. fully controlled and functional human prosthetic hand.
5.
6. While searching about prosthetic human hand on World Wide Web, we get a lot information
for prosthetic human hand. From basic human prosthesis to advanced human prosthesis. There
are basically four type of prosthesis available, that are labelled below,
7. Joint Prosthetic
8. Arm Prosthesis
9. Leg Prosthesis
10. Cosmetic Prosthesis
11.

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12. The joint prosthetic commonly deals with hip, knee and shoulder joints. When cartilage
between the joint or bones goes to wear and as a result of that it would weaken the joints and
cause pain in the joint or at extreme stage, we should go for replacement of that. So at that time
joint prosthesis are used. While in arm prosthesis, it is used to replace a missing upper limb.
Leg prosthesis are used when a person losses his/her leg either because of any accident or by
birth. Leg prosthesis were deal with lower limb. At other hand, in cosmetic prosthesis, it is not
utilized for the particular any functional purpose but it only used to improve person’s
appearance after losing body part. Cosmetic prosthetic commonly deals with artificial eyes,
silicon hands, fingers, breast, feet and toes. It also used to correct facial deformities. Some of
the advanced prosthetic arms are so expensive which is around 1.2 to 3 lacs.
13.
14. As we described above, the available prosthetic hand are excessive in cost. As result of that it
will not affordable to every person. Sometimes it happens that the person we needed prosthetic
hand but due to its high cost it would not able to take advantage of technology. That problem
gave us the aim of project. We planned to manufacture a cost-effective prosthetic hand. So that
every person can afford the prosthetic hand. After doing more research work, we came up with
one manufacturing process, which can able to reduce the cost of human prosthetic hand up to
60 to 70%. An additive manufacturing process are latest and most advanced manufacturing
process. It is capable of manufacture very complex geometry which are too hard to manufacture
in conventional manufacturing process. An additive manufacturing process, most commonly
known as ‘3D printing’ technology can able to manufacture human prosthetic body part easily.
It is a future of Bio-CAD and manufacturing techniques.

Types of Prosthetic Limbs

There are several different categories of prosthetic devices. They are generally grouped
by the way in which the device is controlled, including
Passive Prostheses

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Passive prosthetics are simple, non-moving devices that aim to restore cosmetic appearance and
basic functionality to an amputee. A simple wooden ‘pirate’ peg leg is an example of a simple
passive prosthetic. Prosthetic toes have even been found attached to ancient Egyptian mummy’s
as show in the image to the right.

Mechanical/Body Control Prostheses

Body powered prosthetics are controlled via a harness connected to the user. They are generally a simple
device such as a mechanical hook which is linked to elbow/shoulder movement. Although these devices
are relatively simple, they remain the most popular type of prosthesis today

Myoelectric Controlled Prostheses

Myoelectric prostheses measure electromyography (EMG) signals generated from the

contraction of muscles near an amputee’s residual limb. These signals are measured through
electrodes placed on the surface of the skin or embedded directly into muscles. These signals are
then amplified and sent to a microcontroller which analyses this information and controls the
internal actuators. Myoelectric devices allow for far greater amounts of control than mechanical
devices.
Direct Brain interface

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The most cutting-edge type of control is a direct brain neural interface. A surgical procedure
places electrode arrays on the surface of the brain which are attached to pedestals implanted into
the patient’s skull. As the patient thinks of motion signals detected on the pedestals are used to
control the movement of a robotic arm. This type of technology is still in its infancy but has
already demonstrated disabled people controlling bionic devices with their thoughts alone

Problem Specification:

In this new era of technology, there are many other alternatives to make a prosthetic hand. But as
we dig deep in this prosthetic hand and its manufacturing system. We found this currently
various technologies that are used to make prosthetic hand are very expensive and user and
machine interface is not simple. So that it is hard to afford a prosthetic hand for a person who
has low economic background. The prosthetic hand which are available in market are cost up to
1.5 to 2 lacks. Considering that excessive money factor, we thought of made cost effective
prosthetic hand. In addition of that, as prosthetic hand is being an external part of the human
body so synchronization of prosthetic hand and human body is essential. For that at certain
particular time user should have to visit to consultant doctor. The prosthetic hand which are
available now have very complex structure. To manufacture this complex geometry is hard. So
that its manufacturing time varies from some weeks to some months depend up the designing
and geometric measures of the prosthetic hand.

Manufacturing prosthetic arm by 3D printing method

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.
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 Modern 3D printers allow for detailed mechanical components to be created and assembled
relatively fast. Fabricating complex designs using other methods would be far more expensive
and would not be possible in such a short period of time.

Methodology:

1. To design prosthetic arm model, we are using cad software like CATIA v5.
2. slicing process is done by slicing software like flash print, craft ware, cura.
3. We are using 3d printing technology particularly FDM method. To develop any 3d printed
model we required digital model.

4. 3d printed model is then assembled with the help glue and screws. As that of assembled cad
model. The moment of fingers with the aid of servo motors is done by tendons which is tagged
in such way that the fingers can easily actuated as like human fingers.

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5. Voice recognition module is used to recognize the command and decode it to digital form and
then pass the single to the main board (Arduino board) to actuate the servo motor.

6. Arduino microcontroller is used for upload program to accomplish the given task. We are taking
the help of programmer to write the code to get the desired result.

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 Flow diagram:

Objective:
1. Design and Implementation of a microcontroller-based system which can understand human
voice commands.
2. To attain simple interface between user and machine.
3. Design a simple prototype prosthetic hand with the help of servo motor which can perform
desired operation.
4. Interface of microcontroller based embedded system with prototype prosthetic hand to the voice
commands.
5. To produce the cost-effective prosthetic arm.

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Cost Estimation

Particulars Cost

3D printing Rs 4000

5-6 servo motor Rs 2000

Arduino board Rs 1500

Voice recognition module Rs 3500

Others (adhesive

glue,screws,fishing wire, Rs 5000

silicon skin…etc.)

Total Estimation Rs 15000/-

References
1. S. Mohamed xzzm , M. Anto Bennet, P.L. Annamalai, E. Ramki and M. Mohamed tazudeen,
“Voice Control Prosthetic Arm” Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research.
2. R. ASWINBALAJI, A. ARUNRAJA, “Wireless Voice Controlled Robotics Arm”

International Journal of Emerging Technology in Computer Science & Electronics.

3. Brandi House, JonathanMalkin, JeffBilmes, “The VoiceBot: A Voice Controlled Robot Arm”.

4. 3D Printed Myoelectric Prosthetic Arm Mahdi Elsayed Hussein B. Engineering (Mechatronics)

Thesis October 2014.

5. 3D Printing: Make anything you want (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0EJmBoLq-g)

3D printing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing)

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