abstract
- © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. This paper presents the development of a mechanism aimed to haptic applications. The basic design proposed in this work is intended to interact with a finger without the use of a fixture attached to the body. This work investigates the theoretical workspace of a human index finger and proposes a two degree-offreedom 7-bar linkage mechanism that is synthesized based on such workspace. The paper determines the closed-form solutions to the forward and inverse position, and presents a prototype that is built and tested as a proof of concept of the novel device. The workspace of the constructed mechanism is compared with theoretical models in order to assess their similarity and the viability of accelerometers as position sensing instruments is also tested.