CAREER: Improving Prosthesis Usability through Enhanced Touch Feedback and Intelligent Control

该教师早期职业发展（Career）基金将支持有助于提高上肢假肢功能可用性所需知识的研究，从而促进科学进步，促进国民健康，并确保国防安全。上肢假体是在肢体截肢后用来代替人的自然肢体的假肢。这些肢体通常是机动的，它们的手和手指就像我们的天然手和手指一样运动。不幸的是，这些设备不能为佩戴者提供触觉（基于触摸）信息。触觉信息对于许多任务都是必不可少的，比如拿起一个鸡蛋而不打碎它，关上一个可再密封的袋子，或者用塑料杯喝水。该奖项支持开发一种新型假肢所需的基础研究，这种假肢可以像我们的天然肢体一样智能地与世界互动，并为佩戴者提供这些互动的触觉信息。这种新义肢将解读佩戴者的任务意图，并帮助佩戴者以最小的脑力完成任务。提高假肢的可用性最终将为包括退伍军人在内的肢体丧失者带来更好的生活质量。同样，通过这项研究获得的知识将被证明对其他类型的辅助设备有益，使更多的人在受伤后重返工作岗位。因此，这项研究的结果将有利于美国的经济和社会。这项研究涉及多个学科，包括机械设计、电子学、控制理论、生物医学和机器人。通过这种跨学科的方法，这项研究将扩大开发辅助技术的工程师、科学家和医生以及直接或间接受益于这些技术的社会人士的参与。我们上肢的灵巧操作源于一种分层控制方案，在这种控制方案中，任务意图被转换为外围肢体的操作运动动作，适当地调整肢体的机械阻抗来完成任务目标，同时肢体的触觉反馈用于跟踪任务进度并完善运动计划。要实现与上肢假体相当的灵巧控制能力，需要对适当的方法有充分的了解，通过这种方法，这种分层控制方案可以通过假体扩展到环境中。本研究旨在通过对智能控制的研究来填补这一知识空白，这将使截肢者能够执行当前假肢技术认为不可行的灵巧任务。研究团队将利用数据驱动的方法，从生理和环境相互作用的测量中模拟任务意图，并得出和经验验证阻抗控制和触觉反馈策略，以适应截肢者的意图和正在执行的任务的背景。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will support research that contributes to the knowledge needed to improve the functional usability of upper-limb prostheses, thereby promoting the progress of science, advancing national health, and securing national defense. Upper-limb prostheses are artificial limbs used to replace someone’s natural limb after limb amputation. These limbs are often motorized, featuring hands and fingers that move much like our natural hands and fingers. Unfortunately, these devices do not provide the wearer with haptic (touch-based) information. Haptic information is essential for many tasks, such as picking up an egg without cracking it, closing a resealable bag, or drinking from a plastic cup. This award supports fundamental research needed to develop a new type of prosthesis that intelligently interacts with the world like our natural limbs and provides wearers with haptic information of those interactions. This new prosthesis will interpret the wearers’ task intent and assist the wearer in accomplishing tasks with minimal mental effort. Improving the usability of prostheses will ultimately lead to a better quality of life for individuals experiencing limb loss, including military veterans. Likewise, the knowledge gained through this research will prove beneficial to other types of assistive devices, allowing more individuals to return to the workforce after injury. Therefore, results from this research will benefit the US economy and society. This research involves several disciplines, including mechanical design, electronics, control theory, biomedicine, and robotics. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the research will broaden participation amongst the engineers, scientists, and physicians developing assistive technologies and those in society who directly or indirectly benefit from these technologies.Dexterous manipulation with our upper-limbs originates from a hierarchical control scheme in which task intent is converted to operational motor actions in the peripheral limbs that appropriately tune the limb’s mechanical impedance to accomplish the task goals, all while haptic feedback from the limb is used to track task progress and refine the motor plan. Achieving comparable dexterous control capabilities with an upper-limb prosthesis requires a robust understanding of the appropriate means by which this hierarchical control scheme can be extended out through the prosthesis to the environment. This research seeks to fill this knowledge gap through investigations into intelligent control that will enable an amputee to perform dexterous tasks considered infeasible with current prosthesis technology. The research team will utilize data-driven approaches to model task intent from physiological and environmental interaction measures and derive and empirically validate impedance control and haptic feedback strategies that adapt to the amputee’s intent and the context of the task being performed.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.