Vibrotactile stimulation for 3D printed prosthetic hand

Lack of haptic feedback in prostheses is proving to be the bottleneck in the field. Closed loop prostheses should fill the gap for amputees to experience exteroceptive (environmental pressure) or proprioceptive (proper state or joint angles) by means of different sensory feedback. Detailed work is being done on the development of electrotactile and vi-brotactile stimulation system. The objective of this research is to generate vibrotactile feedback on a residual arm of an amputee. With this research, it is an endeavor for amputees to possess cognitive response while holding something amid environmental interactions with the help of convenient methodology and with suitable components in hand. To make this design pertinent to the objective, we have used coin shaped vibration motors, 0.5-inch diameter circular FSR provide haptic feedback from the tip of the finger. 3D printed prosthetic hand proved to be the best remedy for lowering the cost. The research was conducted on 6 healthy subjects and one amputee. Experimental results showed the effectiveness of proposed approach.

[1]  H. Fawkner,et al.  The use of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) to aid perceptual embodiment of prosthetic limbs. , 2009, Medical hypotheses.

[2]  S S Roberts.  Enabling the future. , 1988, Science.

[3]  Miltiadis K. Hatalis,et al.  Tactile display applications: a state of the art survey , 2005 .

[4]  E. Biddiss,et al.  Upper limb prosthesis use and abandonment: A survey of the last 25 years , 2007, Prosthetics and orthotics international.

[5]  Peter H. Veltink,et al.  Grasping force and slip feedback through vibrotactile stimulation to be used in myoelectric forearm prostheses , 2012, 2012 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[6]  Wenwei Yu,et al.  Psycho-physiological assessment of a prosthetic hand sensory feedback system based on an auditory display: a preliminary study , 2012, Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.

[7]  N. H. H. Mohamad Hanif,et al.  Vibratory feedback for artificial hands , 2013, 2013 International Conference on Electronics, Computer and Computation (ICECCO).

[8]  Louise P. Kirsch,et al.  Information about the Weight of Grasped Objects from Vision and Internal Models Interacts within the Primary Motor Cortex , 2010, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[9]  Lucy E. Dunne,et al.  A shoulder pad insert vibrotactile display , 2003, Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, 2003. Proceedings..

[10]  X. X. Liu,et al.  A sensory feedback system for prosthetic hand based on evoked tactile sensation , 2015, 2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC).

[11]  W.J. Tompkins,et al.  Electrotactile and vibrotactile displays for sensory substitution systems , 1991, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[12]  T. Sheehan,et al.  Impact of limb loss in the United States. , 2014, Physical medicine and rehabilitation clinics of North America.

[13]  Christian Antfolk,et al.  Sensory feedback in upper limb prosthetics , 2013, Expert review of medical devices.

[14]  Hiroyuki Shinoda,et al.  A method of selective stimulation to epidermal skin receptors for realistic touch feedback , 1999, Proceedings IEEE Virtual Reality (Cat. No. 99CB36316).

[15]  Miltiadis K. Hatalis,et al.  Tactile displays: Overview and recent advances , 2008, Displays.

[16]  Cara E. Stepp,et al.  Vibrotactile Sensory Substitution for Electromyographic Control of Object Manipulation , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[17]  Guanglin Li,et al.  A piezoelectret-based approach for touching and slipping detection in robotic hands , 2015, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Technology in Automation, Control, and Intelligent Systems (CYBER).