Design and Fabrication of a Universal Gripper for Children With Special Needs

One in every sixty-eight children in the United States is affected by autism or another form of developmental disability. For children with autism it is difficult to learn the basic hand movements, which are required for gripping and holding objects of complex shapes. Our goal was to help these children by designing an ergonomic, simple, and easy to use interface that can be used to grasp desired objects of various shapes. This grasper translates a full hand power grip to a more fine-tuned precision grip. The sphere-shaped interface design outperformed all other shapes when used as the ergonomic side to be grasped by the children. Using 3D software modeling, we were further able to fine tune the interface for ease of use, manufacturing, and robustness.