Project Overview

This project presents a low-cost, educational experimental setup that mimics the musculoskeletal actuation system of a human finger. It is designed to help students and researchers understand finger rehabilitation and biomimetic design by controlling tendon tension and tip trajectory.

Hardware Configuration

The setup replaces biological components with mechanical equivalents:

• Muscles & Tendons: A nylon thread (tendon) is actuated by a leadscrew and slider-nut mechanism (muscle).

• Actuator: A Permanent Magnet (PM) DC Motor drives the leadscrew.

• Controller: An Arduino UNO microcontroller processes feedback and runs the control algorithm.

• Motor Driver: An L298N driver regulates power to the motor via Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) signals.

• Feedback Sensor: An Infrared (IR) Photo LED Transistor matched sensor pair tracks the position.

Control System & Results

The system operates in current-control mode using a discrete-time PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) algorithm implemented on the Arduino.

By analyzing the real-time position feedback from the IR sensor, the controller adjusts the motor speed and direction. Experimental results demonstrate that the system precisely tracks both step and sinusoidal input trajectories, successfully emulating human finger movement.