[Paul Victorey]

To put this simply, I have a theory. It's a theory regarding a possible type of control system for an artificial hand. If successful, I think it would offer a vast improvement over traditional control mechanisms which have changed surprisingly little since the 1980s.

Now, the current artificial hands on the market are very unlike human hands in their structure. This is largely due to control issues. It also means that current artificial hand prosthetics are useless to this research.

What I need to do research on my own theory is an artificial hand that mimics the motions of a human hand. It would have to have all 14 (moving) joints of the human hand, and each joint would have to be independantly controlled and have a range of motion at least as good as the human hand.

For initial testing a hand with only two fingers could work, but the final experiments would need to be run on a hand that replicated the human hand as precisely as possible.

Also, if the hand provided an output of what the specific angle about each joint was, it would save time adding that functionality (which would be needed for tests).

I'm not a mechanical engineer (I'm biomedical/electrical). I have no experience with building anything like this on my own.

So, the questions:

1) Can I *buy* a robotic hand that would work for my tests?
2) If not, could I give CAD drawings to a company and make them manufacture one for me?

I would probably apply for grants to study this, so I should have a budget. Anyone have thoughts or ideas?