Effects of vibrotactile feedback and grasp interface compliance on perception and control of a sensorized myoelectric hand

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0210956
• Publication Date: 2019-01-16T18:51:17Z
• Authors: Andres E. Pena; Liliana Rincon-Go...; James J. Abbas; Ranu Jung
• Keywords: Prosthetic hand; Interface (matter)

Current myoelectric prosthetic limbs are limited in their ability to provide direct sensory feedback users, which increases attentional demands and reliance on visual cues. Vibrotactile substitution (VSS), can be used a non-invasive manner has demonstrated some improvement hand control. In this work, we developed tested two VSS configurations: one with single burst-rate modulated actuator another spatially distributed array of five coin tactors. We performed comparative assessment these configurations able-bodied subjects investigate perception, control grasp force aperture prosthesis, the effects interface compliance. Six completed perception experiment under stimulation only paradigm; sixteen experiments compare performance graded during tasks; ten effect mechanical compliance force. Results indicated that vibrotactile was not different for absence active control, but it better from tactor than Graded actuator, improved compliant interface. Further investigations should focus use arrays by amputation real-world settings improving increasing hand.