Maestro Hand Exoskeleton Mechatronics

In this project, I led the mechatronics build-up of a Maestro hand exoskeleton system with a focus on integrating new motor controllers with the existing hardware and software.

The Maestro hand exoskeleton is controlled through series elastic actuators (SEAs) with 8 brushed DC motors. In a new Maestro build, we updated actuator electronics to the latest version of EtherCAT motor drivers from Harmonic Bionics. In this project, I tackled the hardware and software integration of new motor drivers into the existing Maestro hand exoskeleton system, including tasks such as: full system wiring (motors, sensors, etc.), software interfacing with existing Maestro C++ libraries, motor tuning through the Maxon ESCON studio, and mechanical mounting of mechatronics hardware.

Collaborators: Job Ramirez, Ashish D. Deshpande