The development of the Edinburgh modular arm system

Modularity has not been investigated in any significant way in the developm ent of upper-limb prostheses. The components currently available are the re sults of different research programmes conducted at different times by a va riety of academic and commercial teams. The result is a historical hodge-po dge of systems which are largely mutually exclusive in terms of compatibili ty. The Edinburgh work seeks to solve this problem by designing components which are neutral in structural terms so that left- and right-handed prosth eses can be configured from the same basic parts. Currently, child and adul t components are separate items; this does not need to be the case and the design presented here allows adult elbow parts to be used as children's sho ulders. This paper will cover the rationale behind the design values and th e technical aspects of the development.