Exploring Biomimetic Stiffness Modulation and Wearable Finger Haptics for Improving Myoelectric Control of Virtual Hand
Exploring Biomimetic Stiffness Modulation and Wearable Finger Haptics for Improving Myoelectric Control of Virtual Hand
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DOI：
10.1109/tnsre.2022.3181284
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发表时间：
2022-06
影响因子：
4.9
通讯作者：
Hong Zeng;Weijie Yu;Dapeng Chen;Xuhui Hu;Dingguo Zhang;Ai-Guon Song
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Hong Zeng;Weijie Yu;Dapeng Chen;Xuhui Hu;Dingguo Zhang;Ai-Guon Song
用户的虚拟手（VH）实施通常被认为对于基于虚拟现实（VR）的手部康复应用很重要，这可能有助于吸引用户并促进运动技能的重新学习。特别是，它要求 VH 产生从刚性到柔性的任务相关交互行为。虽然这种能力是人类通过手部硬度调节和触觉交互所固有的，但在现有研究中 VH 尚未成功模仿。在本文中，我们提出了一项在涉及 VH 肌电控制的 VR 场景中集成仿生刚度调节和可穿戴手指力反馈的工作。一方面，仿生刚度调制直观地使 VH 能够实时模仿用户手部的刚度分布。另一方面，可穿戴式手指力反馈装置在指尖上引起自然而真实的外力感觉，这为用户提供了对环境的正确理解，从而增强了他/她的刚度调节。所提出的集成系统的优点通过八名健康受试者进行评估，这些受试者执行两项具有相反刚度要求的任务。将所实现的性能与集成系统的简化版本进行比较，其中排除了仿生阻抗控制或可穿戴力反馈。结果表明，所提出的集成系统使用户能够通过交互扭矩和视觉的感知来自适应调节 VH 的刚度，从而导致 VH 从刚性到柔软的任务相关行为。
The embodiment of virtual hand (VH) by the user is generally deemed to be important for virtual reality (VR) based hand rehabilitation applications, which may help to engage the user and promote motor skill relearning. In particular, it requires that the VH should produce task-dependent interaction behaviors from rigid to soft. While such a capability is inherent to humans via hand stiffness regulation and haptic interactions, yet it have not been successfully imitated by VH in existing studies. In this paper, we present a work which integrates biomimetic stiffness regulation and wearable finger force feedback in VR scenarios involving myoelectric control of VH. On one hand, the biomimetic stiffness modulation intuitively enables VH to imitate the stiffness profile of the user’s hand in real time. On the other hand, the wearable finger force-feedback device elicits a natural and realistic sensation of external force on the fingertip, which provides the user a proper understanding of the environment for enhancing his/her stiffness regulation. The benefits of the proposed integrated system were evaluated with eight healthy subjects that performed two tasks with opposite stiffness requirements. The achieved performance is compared with reduced versions of the integrated system, where either biomimetic impedance control or wearable force feedback is excluded. The results suggest that the proposed integrated system enables the stiffness of VH to be adaptively regulated by the user through the perception of interaction torques and vision, resulting in task-dependent behaviors from rigid to soft for VH.