Inali - The Bionic Hand

What it does

In an country like India it was found 85% of people with upper limb amputation are living without any solution because they can't afford it. So, Inali is a cost effective prosthetic hand design and developed for people living without any prosthetic care

Your inspiration

The Idea was about solving a problem that derails the lives of millions of people across the country. India alone is home to more than 22 million people with disabilities, with children making up nearly 8 million of that number. Due to cost and lack of accessibility, most of these people never get the help they need, which is why it’s so vital that made me to put my skills and time towards leveraging inexpensive 3D printing technology to help as many people as possible.

How it works

Inali is actuated using the pressure of elbow joint , with the movement of elbow a pressure is applied on the pressure sensors which actuate the motors and the hand perform the function like grip , pinch etc. The first objective was to keep it cost effective so can be affordable for people living in rural areas. The hand will resemble the general form of an adult human hand and entire hand will weigh 450g including self-contained power and control , it gives a grip upto 10lbs , fingers will be able to travel from fully opened to fully closed in 1 second or less and System will last at least 2 hours under continual use, and idle operation of at least 12 hours.

Design process

In last one year , I have fitted this prosthetic hand to more than 300 people and for free and with the continuous feedback, I have made eight design changes, which started with the change in the control system. The first design was having a control system where the patient can control his amputated hand motion with his good hand but with time taken feedback from the patient I found that patient were finding difficulties while using there good hand because of long wires and cables.So, I created a new design which was actuated using shoulder movement but again in the feedback it was found that using the shoulder again and again was creating a pain in the patient shoulder. So, I came up with new design and some new sensors which does not require a huge pressure to actuate the motors and finally succeeded to make the operating method easier for the patient. There were other design changes that I did which include the storage capacity. The first design use 2 big batteries which make it hard for a patient to wear the hand for a long period. So, in the next design I use mobile phone power banks as the battery power to operate the hand and I also added one more feature , if the patient is not using his hand he can plug his phone in the hand and can charge his phone too.

How it is different

In terms of something unique I will divide the design in few areas. 1st is affordability which is the most important factor, it's the biggest reason why most of the people living without any solution - because they can't afford it. Today the current prosthetic hands cost more than 10,000 US dollars , where as my design just cost less than 250 US dollar. So, it's affordable and address the people who actually can't afford the existing devices. Second, most of the existing products in the market have sensors on the fingers tips to get the haptic feedback so that the user can know how much pressure he is applying on any object, and which made it expensive but for my device instead of using such sensor I design my own sensors and a training method for the patient where he can visualize from his eyes that he has gripped the object and now he can stop applying pressure which actually help me to achieve the same functionality like the existing products.Lot More

Future plans

My future goals are to focus on making the hand more aesthetic because it has been seen in an survey that 60% of people are more bend toward the aesthetic part and want something which actually looks like a hand. So, my next goal is to make some durable gloves or something which give the hand a natural look but the real challenge that I feel in this task is the cost part , most of the cosmetic gloves are expensive and if I go with the same existing process it will going to increase the price of the hand.So, i'm looking for ways where I can reach my goal without much affecting the price.

Awards

I'm 25 year old , and looking at my age and the passion to bring a change by solving such a problem. I was awarded with six 3D printing machines by my local community.