Individuals who use myoelectric upper-limb prostheses often rely heavily on vision to complete their daily activities. They thus struggle in situations where vision is overloaded, such as multitasking, or unavailable, such as poor lighting conditions. Non-amputees can easily accomplish such tasks due to tactile reflexes and haptic sensation guiding their upper-limb motor coordination. Based on these principles, we developed and tested two novel prosthesis systems that incorporate autonomous controllers and provide the user with touch-location feedback through either vibration or distributed pressure. These capabilities were made possible by installing a custom contact-location sensor on thefingers of a commercial prosthetic hand, along with a custom pressure sensor on the thumb. We compared the performance of the two systems against a standard myoelectric prosthesis and a myoelectric prosthesis with only autonomous controllers in a difficult reach-to-pick-and-place task conducted without direct vision. Results from 40 non-amputee participants in this between-subjects study indicated that vibrotactile feedback combined with synthetic reflexes proved significantly more advantageous than the standard prosthesis in several of the task milestones. In addition, vibrotactile feedback and synthetic reflexes improved grasp placement compared to only synthetic reflexes or pressure feedback combined with synthetic reflexes. These results indicate that both autonomous controllers and haptic feedback facilitate success in dexterous tasks without vision, and that the type of haptic display matters.
翻译:根据这些原则,我们开发并测试了两个新颖的假肢系统,这些系统包含自主控制器,通过振动或分散压力向用户提供触摸定位反馈。这些能力之所以成为可能,是因为在视觉超载的情况下,例如多任务或无法使用,例如照明条件差。由于触摸反射和机械性能指导上升升升运动的协调,非示范性能很容易完成这些任务。根据这些原则,我们开发并测试了两个新颖的假肢系统,这些系统包括自主控制器,通过振动或分散压力向用户提供触摸定位反馈。这些能力是通过在商用假肢手的灯泡上安装定制的接触感应感应器,以及拇指上的定制压力感应感应器等。我们比较了两个系统的性能与标准的近电动假肢假肢假肢和透感应器的性能,我们比较了两个系统的性能,只有自主控制器,在没有直接愿景到选地点的任务中,我们开发并测试了40个未受到欢迎的参与者通过振动的反馈结果。这些结果表明,与合成反应器合成反应器的复合反应和合成反应在几个合成的合成反应中都显示,这些结果中,这些结果与合成和合成反应都表明,这些结果与合成反应的合成反应都比合成反应都更有利。