Restoring tactile sensations via neural interfaces for real-time force-and-slippage closed-loop control of bionic hands

Abstract

Despite previous studies on the restoration of tactile sensation on the fingers and the hand, there are no examples of use of the routed sensory information to finely control the prosthesis hand in complex grasp and manipulation tasks. Here it is shown that force and slippage sensations can be elicited in an amputee subject by means of biologically-inspired slippage detection and encoding algorithms, supported by a stick-slip model of the performed grasp. A combination of cuff and intraneural electrodes was implanted for eleven weeks in a young woman with hand amputation, and was shown to provide close-to-natural force and slippage sensations, paramount for significantly improving the subject’s manipulative skills with the prosthesis. Evidence is provided about the improvement of the subject’s grasping and manipulation capabilities over time, thanks to neural feedback. The elicited tactile sensations enabled the successful fulfillment of fine grasp and manipulation tasks with increasing complexity. Grasp performance was quantitatively assessed by means of instrumented objects and a purposely developed metrics. Closed-loop control capabilities enabled by the neural feedback were compared to those achieved without feedback. Further, the work investigates whether the described amelioration of motor performance in dexterous tasks had as central neurophysiological correlates changes in motor cortex plasticity and whether such changes were of purely motor origin, or else the effect of a strong and persistent drive of the sensory feedback.

Biomimetic sensory feedback through peripheral nerve stimulation improves dexterous use of a bionic hand

“…In this respect, our work is consistent with a recent study, showing that biomimetic stimulation leads to more naturalistic percepts, leads to greater embodiment, and improves performance on object manipulation tasks (30). In the present study, we extend these previous findings to a new technology and a new task, an important replication of the benefits of sensory feedback and biomimicry, given that the relevant studies thus far have involved a single participant (12,13,15,30,45).…”

Printed Soft Sensor with Passivation Layers for the Detection of Object Slippage by a Robotic Gripper

“…Figure 2 e illustrates the dependence of the sensor polarization on the annealing temperature; the average values for the three samples are shown. Annealing at 145 °C provided the highest polarization value of 8.2 µC·cm −2 because the crystallization temperature of the P(VDF-TrFE) was in the range of 130–150 °C [ 29 ].…”

Progress in wearable electronics/photonics—Moving toward the era of artificial intelligence and internet of things

“…With more and more distributed sensor nodes and functional units, interactions between human and machines are becoming inevitable and increasingly intimate in daily life, such as in the scenarios of healthcare, 238‐240 disabled aids, 241,242 robotics, 243‐245 entertainment, 246,247 gaming, 248 VR/AR, 219,249,250 and so on. As mentioned in the previous section, using self‐powered functional components in the whole system can effectively reduce the overall power consumption.…”