Closed-Loop Force Control by Biorealistic Hand Prosthesis With Visual and Tactile Sensory Feedback.

The ability of a novel biorealistic hand prosthesis for grasp force control reveals improved neural compatibility between the human-prosthetic interaction. The primary purpose here was to validate a virtual training platform for amputee subjects and evaluate the respective roles of visual and tactile information in fundamental force control tasks. We developed a digital twin of tendon-driven prosthetic hand in the MuJoCo environment.

Somatotopically Evoked Tactile Sensation via Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation Improves Prosthetic Sensorimotor Performance.

Sensory feedback provides critical interactive information for the effective use of hand prostheses. Non-invasive neural interfaces allow convenient access to the sensory system, but they communicate a limited amount of sensory information. This study examined a novel approach that leverages a direct and natural sensory afferent pathway, and enables an evoked tactile sensation (ETS) of multiple digits in the projected finger map (PFM) of participants with forearm amputation non-invasively.

Study of Tactile Sensation Somatotopy and Homology Between Projected Fingers in Residual Limb and Natural Fingers in Intact Limb.

Object: Based on the comparisons of the somatosensory event-related potentials (ERPs), the object of this study is to investigate the underlying cognition mechanism of somatotopy and the homology of tactile sensation between the projected fingers in the residual limb and the natural fingers in the intact limb.

Methods: One amputee subject and three able-bodied subjects were recruited. The forearm amputee had a clear projected finger mapping (PFM) that could evoke the tactile sensation of the entire five missing fingers.

Simultaneous sEMG Recognition of Gestures and Force Levels for Interaction With Prosthetic Hand.

The natural interaction between the prosthetic hand and the upper limb amputation patient is important and directly affects the rehabilitation effect and operation ability. Most previous studies only focused on the interaction of gestures but ignored the force levels. This paper proposes a simultaneous recognition method of gestures and forces for interaction with a prosthetic hand.

EEG Features of Evoked Tactile Sensation: Two Cases Study.

Sensory feedback for prosthetics is an important issue. The area of forearm stump skin that has evoked tactile sensation (ETS) of fingers is defined as the projected finger map (PFM), and the area close to the PFM region that does not have ETS is defined as the non-projected finger map (NPFM). Previous studies have confirmed that ETS can restore the tactile pathway of the lost finger, which was induced by stimulation of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) on the end of stump skin.

Evaluation of multiple perceptual qualities of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation for evoked tactile sensation in forearm amputees.

. Evoked tactile sensation (ETS) elicited by transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is promising to convey digit-specific sensory information to amputees naturally and non-invasively. Fitting ETS-based sensory feedback to amputees entails customizing coding of multiple sensory information for each stimulation site.

Biorealistic Control of Hand Prosthesis Augments Functional Performance of Individuals With Amputation.

The human hand has compliant properties arising from muscle biomechanics and neural reflexes, which are absent in conventional prosthetic hands. We recently proved the feasibility to restore neuromuscular reflex control (NRC) to prosthetic hands using real-time computing neuromorphic chips. Here we show that restored NRC augments the ability of individuals with forearm amputation to complete grasping tasks, including standard Box and Blocks Test (BBT), Golf Balls Test (GBT), and Potato Chips Test (PCT).

Restoring Finger-Specific Sensory Feedback for Transradial Amputees via Non-Invasive Evoked Tactile Sensation.

This study assessed the feasibility to restore finger-specific sensory feedback in transradial amputees with electrical stimulation of evoked tactile sensation (ETS). Here we investigated primary somatosensory cortical (SI) responses of ETS using Magnetoencephalography. SI activations revealed a causal correlation with peripheral stimulation of projected finger regions on the stump skin.

Chemical Environment-Induced Mixed Conductivity of Titanate as a Highly Stable Oxygen Transport Membrane.

Coupling of two oxygen-involved reactions at the opposite sides of an oxygen transport membrane (OTM) has demonstrated great potential for process intensification. However, the current cobalt- or iron-containing OTMs suffer from poor reduction tolerance, which are incompetent for membrane reactor working in low oxygen partial pressure (pO). Here, we report for the first time a both Co- and Fe-free SrMgZrTiO (SMZ-Ti) membrane that exhibits both superior reduction tolerance for 100 h in 20 vol.

Manipulability Inclusive Principle for Assistive Result Evaluation of Assistive Mechanism.

In this paper, from the aspect of kinematics, we reveal the physical significance of assistance for the assistive mechanism. Then, Manipulability Inclusive Principle (MIP) is proposed to evaluate assistive mechanism's assistive feasibility and assistive effect through the manipulability comparison between the assisted limb and slave-active-assistive mechanism. The optimization based on MIP can make the assistive mechanism realize better kinematical performance and assistance.

Mechanical Design and Control Strategy for Hip Joint Power Assisting.

The basic requirements for mechanical design and control strategy are adapting to human joint movements and building an interaction model between human and robot. In this paper, a 3-UPS parallel mechanism is adopted to realize that the instantaneous rotation center of the assistive system coincides with human joint movement center, and a force sensory system is used to detect human movement intention and build the modeling of control strategy based on the interactive force. Then, based on the constructed experimental platform, the feasibility of movement intention detection and power assisting are verified through the experimental results.