OBJECTIVE To test the potential of wrist guards to prevent wrist injury in recreational activities that require good grip strength and hand dexterity. METHODS Forty eight children aged 5-8 years from one Melbourne school volunteered for tests chosen or devised following a review of the literature on the effects of orthoses use and hand function. RESULTS Wrist guard wearing significantly deg...

The concept of dexterity and its dimensions have been difficult to define through the years, and various research communities have different definitions of dexterity. In this paper, we present a novel approach to understand people’s perception of dexterity and its different dimensions in daily tasks. The approach entails a video-based survey where people score different tasks along pre-specifie...

If the influence of visual-motor integration (copying forms) on the quality of handwriting has been widely investigated, the influence of eye-hand coordination (tracing item) has been less well analyzed. The Concise Assessment Scale for Children’s Handwriting (BHK), the Developmental Test of Visual Perception (DTVP-2), and the section “Manual Dexterity” of the Movement Assessment Battery for Ch...

Humanoid robotic mechanisms are widely utilized to improve the efficiency and speed of industrial applications. The field is improving with the current tendency towards custom 3D printing and advancements in wearable technology. A method and an implementation to replicate the human finger movements in a vertical plane, using a robotic hand is presented in this paper. A wearable remote controlle...

In this paper, three translational parallel manipulators, i.e., the RAF, the 3UPU and the Delta, are analyzed for dexterity and workspace. First, the geometric models for these three robots were investigated to determine their respective workspaces. The kinematic models are also derived to calculate the global dexterity of each robot. A multi-objective optimization, where the global dexterity i...

The dexterity of a manipulator with passive joints, also known as an underactuated manipulator, differs from the dexterity of a fully actuated one, even if their mechanical structures are identical. Therefore, for fault tolerance and energy saving purposes, it is important to study the dexterity of underactuated manipulators. The purpose of this work is to quantify the dexterity of underactuate...

Several devices are commercially manufactured which allow the hand to be introduced into an insufflated abdomen while maintaining the pneumoperitoneum. The Pneumosleeve® (Dexterity Inc., Atlanta, USA) was the first device, introduced in 1997. The Intromit® (Applied Medical, Rancho Santa Margarita, USA) and the HandPort® (Smith and Nephew, Huntingdon, UK) followed shortly thereafter, but all hav...