Enabling Technologies for Sensory Feedback in Next-Generation Assistive Devices

人造手臂或假肢是一种技术，可以用来帮助那些严重受伤导致失去手臂的人进行日常生活中的基本活动。这些活动可能包括吃饭，洗澡，开门或与朋友握手。如今市场上的许多人造手臂都非常复杂，提供单独的手指运动，甚至手指内的部分运动，类似于自然的手臂和手。这些假肢通常通过感测假肢所附接的剩余手臂的肌肉的收缩来控制，从而允许使用者通过弯曲他们的肌肉来操作手臂。然而，人造手臂目前缺少的一个关键方面是反馈感。换句话说，使用者不看手臂就不知道手臂在哪里，也不知道手有多宽，如果拿起一个精致的物体，也不知道它被抓得有多紧。这导致了人工手臂的缓慢和笨拙的使用，并阻止了它的使用变得真正自然。本项目的目标是开发技术，使下一代辅助设备能够通过增强的感觉反馈提供真正自然的控制。我们的长期愿景是为用户提供反馈感，重现与真实的手臂相关的自然反馈。为了实现这种反馈水平，我们必须满足两个明确的目标：生成模仿自然手臂和手的人工信号，并提供将这些信号传递到假肢用户神经系统的方法。这些目标将通过以下方式实现：建立新的指尖传感器，使假肢具有逼真的触觉，包括压力、剪切力和温度;开发一种“虚拟手”，模仿真实的手产生的神经冲动，使用户能够感觉到假手的位置;设计电极和刺激系统，将模拟的神经冲动直接传递到个体的神经系统。在假肢设备中建立这种水平的反馈，能够实现比目前可能的更高水平的功能。例如，设备使用者将能够自然地伸手拿起玻璃杯，同时在谈话中保持目光接触，或者拿起苹果而不擦伤它。这将推动假肢领域的发展，为假肢使用者提供增强的功能，并减少获得新设备时所需的学习时间。

An artificial arm, or prosthesis, is an example of technology that can be used to help somebody perform essential activities of daily living after a serious injury that results in the loss of their arm. Such activities might include eating, washing, opening doors, or shaking hands with a friend. Many artificial arms on the market these days are highly sophisticated, offering individual finger movement, and even movement of segments within a finger, that resemble the natural arm and hand. These prosthetic arms are often controlled by sensing the contractions in the muscles of the remaining arm to which the prosthesis is attached, allowing the user to operate the arm by flexing their muscles. However, one key aspect of artificial arms that is currently missing is the sense of feedback. In other words, the user does not know where the arm is or how wide open the hand is without looking at it, and if a delicate object is picked up, there is no sense of how hard it is being gripped. This leads to slow and awkward use of the artificial arm and prevents its use from becoming truly natural.The goal of this project is to develop technologies that will enable the next generation of assistive devices to provide truly natural control through enhanced sensory feedback. Our long-term vision is for artificial arms that provide the user with a sense of feedback that recreates the natural feedback associated with a real arm. To enable this level of feedback, we must meet two clear objectives: to generate artificial signals that mimic those of the natural arm and hand, and to provide a means of delivering those signals to the nervous system of a prosthesis user. These objectives will be achieved by: building new fingertip sensors to give the prosthesis a realistic sense of touch, including pressure, shear and temperature; developing a 'virtual hand' that mimics the nerve impulses that would be produced by a real hand, giving the user a sense of position of an artificial hand; and designing electrodes and a stimulation system that can deliver the simulated nerve impulses directly to the individual's nervous system.Building this level of feedback into prosthetic devices will enable much higher levels of function to be achieved than is currently possible. Device users would be able to naturally reach out and pick up a glass, for example, whilst maintaining eye contact in a conversation, or pick up an apple without bruising it. This will advance the field of prosthetics, provide enhanced function to prosthesis users and decrease the learning time involved when acquiring a new device.