Forward Kinematics

For the purpose of learning, we determined that there are two modes we are interested. The two modes are specifying the angle of the joints of the fingers and the second mode is specifying the location of the finger tip. The first mode is relevant for learning sign language and the second mode is relevant for learning instruments.

To implement the second mode, we need to apply forward kinematics so that we can determine the position of the finger in space based off of the finger angles. This was implemented in Matlab and then transferred to Python. We are considering 3 degrees of freedom for the finger: side-to-side movement of the finger, rotation of the finger joints (metacarpophalangeal, proximal interphalangeal, and distal interphalangeal).

For those interested, I used the following Python library to do transformations in Python: https://github.com/matthew-brett/transforms3d