GRASP

Smart Arm

Our initial project, GRASP, will be to focus on developing a low-cost, rapidly manufacturable bionic hand. The demand for prostheses is universal; over one million amputations occur annually around the world. Although around 40 million people have amputations around the world, prosthetic options are limited and are only accessible to approximately 5% of the population. The GRASP prosthesis design will revolve around three pillars:

  1. the use of polymers to create a durable and reliable design;
  2. the use of two levels of control, myoelectric and electromechanical, to bridge the gap between patient preferences and technological limitations; and
  3. the use of 3D printing to reduce costs and allow for rapid manufacturing of the hand.

Short Term Goals

We plan to generate a bionic hand prototype with a companion software by the end of April, 2019. We plan to showcase our design at the UBC Bionics Network Showcase in early 2019. This year we will be generating circuit designs, firmware programming, software programming, and mechanical design for the external casing and actuation of the hand.

Long Term Goals

The Design Team plans to have a three year cycle for this project. In 2020, we will continue to test and develop the mechanics and software to improve the hand’s functionality, with the goal to finalize our design by the 2020-2021 school year. Year 2: We will enter in the iBEST competition in June 2019. Year 3: We will enter in the IDeA Competition in 2020. Excelling at IDeA will provide us the opportunity to participate in the CIX Conference in 2021.

In summary, BEAR aims to complete GRASP after 3 years of dedicated work.

Competitions