Thesis Title: Mechatronic Design of an Upper Limb Prosthesis with a Hand

Authors: Lei He, Caihua Xiong, and Keke Zhang

Year of Publication: 2014
Citation:
He L., Xiong C., Zhang K. (2014) Mechatronic Design of an Upper Limb Prosthesis with a Hand. In:
Zhang X., Liu H., Chen Z., Wang N. (eds) Intelligent Robotics and Applications. ICIRA 2014.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8917. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-
319-13966-1_6

Critique:

The thesis paper written by He, Xiong, and Zhang is primarily about creating and
designing a prosthesis focused providing functionality, accessibility, and aesthetics to people
who have lost their upper limbs. The introduction of the paper did a good job in providing a
background and context to their paper in their opening statements. Their reason for conducting
their research is rooted in statistics that present a problem, where a percentage of the Chinese
population are physically disabled and are vulnerable physical, psychological and vocational
consequences. This I think helps readers to get a head start on what the succeeding parts of the
thesis will be about.
The section of the introduction dedicated to the statement of the problem and its sub-
problems is also well constructed. The general statement of the problem gives the readers the
very gist of the issue at hand where amputees would prefer passive prosthetics than active
prosthetics. In my opinion, I think this ignites curiosity to the reader and makes them question
why would there be a preference for traditional prosthetics when there are prosthetics that can
simulate limb movement that are in development. At that moment, the researchers quickly
answer this question by enumerating issues with active prosthetics, which is in itself is an outline
of the sub-problems of the research. Through the sub-problems, they are able to elaborate more
on the problem at hand by providing any other shortcomings that may be encountered if these
sub-problems are not resolved or avoided. Overall, this section of the thesis’s introduction takes
advantage of the momentum established by their opening statements and subtly guides the
readers to a solution to the problem.
Instead of a dedicated paragraph for the significance of the study, it is somewhat
intertwined to the previous two sections. The community that will greatly benefit from the study
are those who are physically disabled or amputees, which was mentioned in the background of
the study. The findings of the study can be used as a reference point in order to resolve the many
issues faced by active prosthetics, to which is outlined in the statement of the problem. The
introduction of the thesis however, seems to have not provided any reason why the research must
be pursued other than for the sake of progressing the research in the field.
 In terms of the objectives, the researchers did not provide any other objectives aside from
creating a prosthetic that can fully mimic the characteristics and functionality of an upper limb
for amputees. As for the limitations of the study, their study is limited by a dilemma and they
chose to resolve this by making the best of both worlds of the options they are provided with in
the design of the prosthetic. Overall, the introduction of the thesis went off by a good start but
began to fall flat when it came to the significance, objectives, and limitations because it didn’t
have the same amount of effort in explaining or providing context of these sections.