This robotic arm copies your hand movements!

The Ultimate Robotics artificial hand project, with its imitation of human hand movements, brings us one step closer to the cyberpunk future.

If you dream of controlling giant robots and exoskeletons with a human body, you will definitely be excited about the Ultimate Robots project. The company has created a robotic arm that is controlled by the movement of muscles and thanks to the EMG signal sensor called uMyo. EMG is the name given to a biomedical signal that measures the electric currents generated in the muscles during contraction and indicates the neuromuscular activities.

The Ultimate Robots robotic arm project has been designed as a simple demonstration of the capabilities of the uMyo sensor. Three separate uMyo PCBs are embedded in this mechanical hand to accurately detect the person’s movements. Each finger on the robotic arm has two tendons and is connected to a wheel that works with servo motors. These motors determine whether or not the robotic hand finger should be opened or closed.

The interesting point about the Ultimate Robotics robotic arm is its connection to uMyo; a open-source game controller that is designed as a means of user input. This sensor can wirelessly transmit data to eliminate many of the cables from the robotic arm project. According to the robotic arm manufacturers, uMyo can detect various muscle signals including arms, legs, facial muscles, and torso.

According to Tom’s Hardware, two uMyo sensors are located on the elbow of the Ultimate Robots robotic arm, which control finger muscle signals. The third sensor is used on the wrist to monitor movement of the forearm muscles.

The signals are then directed to the Arduino and wireless signal reception is made possible with the nRF24 module. In the next stage, Arduino processes the inputs and sends commands to servo motors through the PCA9685 driver board, providing appropriate motion responses for the robotic arm.

Open source is not the only advantage of uMyo, and this sensor is also applicable in the software section of the robotic arm project. Utimate Robotics has published all project codes on Github so that enthusiasts can take advantage of them.