Oki, the Siksika Nation Robotics Club are working on an open source robotic prosthetic hand and arm. The team is composed of 7 grade nine students interested in science and technology, who meet twice a week after school to work on their project. This is the clubs first year as a robotics team and they are very excited to be developing this project. The robotic arm will be controlled by the user’s brain waves.

In order to allow brain waves to control the hand the user will wear an EEG (electroencephalograph) electrodes on their head. The electrodes will record the signal and send it to the robotic hand. The control for the arm is being coded using open source coding and parts. The club is working on this project to help members of the community that may require a prosthetic hand.

March 2020 Update

The Siksika Robotics team has been busy assembling the robotic hand. All parts have been printed and assembly is currently being conducted.

Due to delicate pieces a number of parts have had to be reprinted. The team has upgraded the 3D printers with a new print nozzle that allows them to print with a stronger and more flexible material. The team has made some mid assembly adjustments to parts that did not fit the servo motors. This was done through using tinkerCAD software.

The team has also been working on connecting the Arduino microcontrollers to the servo motors and practicing their coding skills. Currently the team is working on cleaning up the signal from the Arduino to the servo motor.

A few weeks ago our EMG and EEG microprocessor units arrived from BackYard Brains. The students have had a lot of fun testing out the units and getting EEG and EMG traces. We are having some trouble achieving a clean EEG signal, though this was to be expected at this point.

Last week we had a big breakthrough with achieving the movement of a finger from a biometric signal.