Taking just 2020 as an example, we can infer that the toll human activities have on nature and wildlife is now more prominent than ever. Ecosystems are disturbed due to the increasing brutality and frequency of calamities like floods, cyclones, wildfires, sea-level rise, etc. Rescuing and providing care to the affected animals does prevent them from going extinct, but since they can’t be sent back to the wild, especially those that have lost limbs, it still affects their ecosystem adversely. Such is so because the available limb prosthetics do not equip them with good enough odds to survive in the wild, up against the rest of the abled wildlife. The objective is to develop a forelimb prosthetic design for quadrupeds, which constitute a majority of terrestrial mammals, that renders special-purpose forelimb prosthetics more or less obsolete while also superseding them in mobility, terrain adaptability, and durability. This would enable them to return to the wild, roughly keeping their odds of survival the same as the abled, thus giving the ecosystem a new chance for sustenance. We finalized on a geared five-bar mechanism to govern the joint of the upper and lower-forelimb, emulating the most common gait used by quadrupeds. A carbon-fiber-based ergonomically designed, modified, compliant J-type blade forms the lower forelimb, providing structure and flexibility for locomotion and some cushioning for the spine. Further, ITAP and actuators with sensors can govern the mechanism by detecting shoulder muscle movement. The following software were part of this project: Ansys, Catia, DAS-2D, Linkage, SolidWorks.

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