Sensorimotor control of grasping and manipulation through a soft-synergy prosthetic hand and peripheral neural interface system
Abstract
We propose to study the fusion of two advanced and promising technologies that can significantly improve quality of life in individuals with upper limb loss: (1) biologically-inspired, multi-degrees of freedom softrobotics prosthetic hands, the SoftHand Pro (SHP), and (2) Neural-Enabled Prosthetic Hand (NEPH) technology that uses invasive peripheral neural interfaces to enable closed-loop control of terminal devices. With regards to the SHP, our disruptive approach to prosthetics is based on the merger of the neuroscientific concept of postural synergies of the human hands with the new engineering technologies of soft robotics. The outcome of combining these two advances in an artificial hand led to the SHP, a prototype prosthesis characterized by human-like coordinated motion among all digits. The SHP can mold to a wide range of object shapes, is resistant to large impacts, and can be controlled in an intuitive way by activating only few input channels (e.g. two myoelectric signals in past work). The Arizona State University (ASU) team will (1) identify optimal training protocol to help users integrate haptic feedback in object manipulation tasks with behavioral studies in able-body subjects, and (2) improve control of grasp force in SHP by designing new myoelectric controller for SHP. With regards to the NEPH, the Florida International University (FIU) team has performed work with electrodes placed within peripheral nerve fascicles to stimulate sensory afferents to elicit naturalistic sensations of touch and hand posture. They will build on their current system to integrate SHP and NEPH systems to permit closed-loop operation of the myoelectric hand. Furthermore, they will (1) define optimal mapping of mechanical SHP-environment interaction sensing in grasp and manipulation tasks to electrical stimulation of the peripheral nerve fibers, and (2) conduct functional testing on transradial amputees using state-of-the-art clinical metrics as well as metrics obtained from literature on human grasping and dexterous manipulation. To accomplish these objectives, we have planned three Major Tasks...
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Feb 14, 2019
- Source ID
- W911NF1710049
Entities
People
- Marco Santello
Organizations
- Arizona State University
- Army Contracting Command
- Office of the Secretary of Defense