Development of a Highly Dexterous Robotic Hand with Independent Finger Movements for Amputee Training

Abstract

Around the world, there are thousands of people who lost a hand during war or as a consequence of an accident. Artificial hand prosthesis controlled by surface electromyography (EMG) signals offers a promising solution to improve the quality of life of amputees. As part of the process of prosthesis fitting, an occupational therapist will try to train the amputee with the help of a physical prosthesis [1] that is not actually fitted, but only displayed to provide visual feedback, but these are expensive (>£16,000). This training should be performed for long periods of time at the rehabilitation centre prior to the prosthesis fitting. It aims at improving the generation of nerve signals for capture by EMG probes, and at tuning of the EMG pattern recognition algorithm to the actions most suited for each amputee [2]. This part of the rehabilitation process can be made more efficient and more widely available through the use of a low-cost actuated hand with the same degrees of freedom as the prosthetic device to be fitted.