Toward use of the synergy-based SoftHand Pro for activities of daily living by transradial amputees: A multi-site clinical trial

项目总结 人类的手在执行许多日常活动中起着至关重要的作用，包括自我喂养、使用工具和 休闲娱乐。因此，由于创伤或疾病导致的手的丧失可以显著地限制或干扰 丧失肢体的人日常活动和工作的能力，从而极大地影响残疾人的整体素质 生活。尽管假手的设计和研究取得了进展，但广泛接受假手的几个障碍 丧失上肢的人的假手仍然存在，包括日常活动能力有限和 假手的耐用性差。因此，今天市面上可以买到的肌电假手 未能满足肢体丧失者的需要，即重新获得一定程度的自主性、功能性和 重新进入劳动力大军。为了解决这些差距，在过去的几年里，我们调查了 这是一只最初为机器人抓取和操纵而设计的人造手-- SoftHand-可以通过非侵入性肌电控制器用于假肢应用- SoftHand Pro(SHP)。SHP的新颖设计是世界上唯一一只结合了 人类手协同效应和软机器人技术的概念。初值泛函的结果 评估和生物力学分析显示，失去上肢的人可以进行 使用小水电的各种抓取和操纵任务的水平与其首选的水平相似或更高 假肢装置。此外，主题调查报告了对舒适性和舒适度的积极反馈 与使用SHP相关联。这种反馈也对软件和硬件的制作起到了重要作用 改进使手更轻，能够抓取和操纵小物体。我们建议 确定SHP可以在多大程度上满足经桡骨截肢者的三项关键需求 满足商业上可获得的手假体：功能、多功能性和坚固性。我们会做到这一点的 目的通过将其功能、通用性和健壮性与商业上可用的多位数进行比较 假手，I-肢体(Ossur)。我们将追求三个目标：(1)确定 使用SHP的抓取和操作任务的性能优于I型肢体，(2)确定 在较长的一段时间内每天使用SHP和I-Limb可以改善抓取和 操作性能，以及(3)获得SHP使用模式和受试者对使用 SHP和I-Limb。我们将检验以下假设：(1)SHP将优于I-Limb，以及(2)日常使用 在8周的时间里，两只假手的握力都会有明显的改善 与I型肢体相比，SHP的操控性能更好。我们将获得收集的使用情况和调查数据 通过SHP和I-Limb固件在日常使用中对AIMS 1和AIMS 2中获得的数据进行补充探讨 日常使用。这项拟议的工作意义重大，因为它将深入了解创新的软协同- 基于假体设计的功能、通用性和健壮性是商业假体所不具备的。

PROJECT SUMMARY The human hand plays a critical role in performing many daily activities including self-feeding, tool use, and recreation. Therefore, loss of the hand due to traumatic injury or disease can significantly limit or interfere with the ability of persons with limb loss to perform daily activities and work, thus greatly affecting overall quality of life. Despite advances in prosthetic hand design and research, several barriers to widespread acceptance of prosthetic hands by persons with upper limb loss remain, including limited ability to perform daily activities and poor durability of the prosthetic hand. Therefore, today’s commercially-available myoelectric hand prostheses fail to address the needs of persons with limb loss, i.e., regaining some degree of autonomy, functionality, and re-entry into the work force. To address these gaps, in the past few years we have investigated the extent to which an artificial anthropomorphic hand originally designed for robotic grasping and manipulation – the SoftHand – could be used for prosthetic applications through a non-invasive myoelectric controller – the SoftHand Pro (SHP). The novel design of the SHP is the only prosthetic hand in the world that combines the concept of human hand synergies and soft robotics technologies. The results of preliminary functional assessments and biomechanical analyses revealed that individuals with upper limb loss could perform a variety of grasping and manipulation tasks with the SHP at levels similar or superior to those of their preferred prosthetic device. Additionally, subject surveys reported positive feedback about the ease and comfort associated with using the SHP. This feedback was also instrumental in making software and hardware improvements to make the hand lighter and able to grasp and manipulate small objects. We propose to determine the extent to which the SHP can address three critical needs of transradial amputees that are not met by commercially-available hand prostheses: function, versatility, and robustness. We will attain this objective by comparing its function, versatility, and robustness with a commercially-available multi-digit prosthetic hand, the i-limb (Ossur). We will pursue three aims: (1) to determine the extent to which performance of grasping and manipulation tasks using the SHP is superior to the i-limb, (2) to determine the extent to which daily use of the SHP and i-limb over an extended period of time improves grasping and manipulation performance, and (3) to obtain SHP usage patterns and subjects’ satisfaction ratings from using the SHP and i-limb. We will test the hypotheses that (1) the SHP will outperform the i-limb, and (2) daily use of both prosthetic hands over an 8-week period each will lead to significantly greater improvement in grasping and manipulation performance with the SHP than the i-limb. We will obtain usage and survey data collected through the SHP and i-limb firmware during daily use to complement data obtained in Aims 1 and 2 to explore daily use. This proposed work is significant because it will shed insight on whether an innovative soft synergy- based prosthetic design allows for function, versatility and robustness not available in commercial prostheses.