Soft Synergy-Based Artificial Hand for Prosthetic Applications

描述(由申请人提供)：人手对于日常生活(ADL)的许多活动(包括自我喂养、工具使用和娱乐)的执行至关重要。因此，由于创伤或疾病导致的手丧失，极大地限制了肢体丧失者的日常生活能力和工作能力，从而极大地影响了整体生活质量。尽管假手的设计和研究取得了进展，但仍有几个障碍阻碍了假手在肢体丧失患者中的广泛接受。假体使用的两个最大障碍是假体有限的功能，例如，执行ADL的能力有限，以及舒适性，包括假体的适合性和重量。与放弃手假体相关的其他因素包括假手的耐用性；缺乏感觉反馈；成本，当考虑到更复杂的手假体的初始和维护成本时，这可能是显著的，即肌电模型；以及假手的美学外观。因此，今天市面上可以买到的手假体不能满足肢体丧失者的需要，即重新获得一定程度的自主性、功能和重新进入劳动力大军。为了解决上述假手研究和肢体丧失患者的接触方面的空白，我们建议设计一种基于比萨大学和意大利理工学院(IIT)设计的假手的新假手，PISA/IIT SoftHand(SH)。SH的设计基于最近提出的“软协同效应”方法，该方法利用了人类手协同效应的概念和新的软机器人技术的结合。SH是为机器人应用而设计和实施的，因此它在横断性截肢患者的假体应用上的潜力仍有待证明。然而，初步数据表明，使用肌电版本的SH的健康对照组只需最少的训练就可以抓住和操纵各种各样的物体。拟议的研究旨在追求两个目标：(1)量化SH在Intat个体上应用假体的功能能力；(2)量化改良SH在肢体丧失患者上的功能能力。Aim 1(第1年)的结果将用于对SH(插座、基于肌电的控制器、力反馈接口)进行设计修改，以便在患者身上进行测试(Aim 2，第2年)。为了这两个目标，我们将使用临床医生使用的任务来评估上肢丧失者的功能，以及生物力学测试。我们假设，患者将学习使用SH，并执行比他们目前的终端设备所允许的更高水平的抓取和操作任务。这项探索性研究的长期目标是为一项更大规模的研究提供重要的基础，该研究的重点是(1)设计一种低成本、高性能的手假体，该假体将被肢体丧失患者接受，以及(2)能够执行比目前商业上可获得的假体所允许的更广泛的ADL任务。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The human hand is critically important for performance of many activities of daily living (ADL), including self- feeding, tool use, and recreation. Therefore, loss of the hand due to traumatic injury or disease significantly limits persons with limb loss' ability to perform ADL and work, thus greatly affecting overall quality of life. Despite advances in hand prostheses design and research, several barriers remain against widespread acceptance of prosthetic hands by persons with limb loss. The two most significant deterrents to prosthetic use are prostheses' limited functionality, e.g., limited ability to perfor ADL, and comfort, which includes fit and weight of prosthesis. Additional factors associated with abandonment of hand prostheses are durability of the prosthetic hand; lack of sensory feedback; cost, which can be significant when considering both the initial and maintenance costs of the more sophisticated hand prostheses, i.e., myoelectric models; and the aesthetic appearance of the prosthetic hand. Therefore, today's commercially available hand prostheses fail to address the needs of persons with limb loss, i.e., regaining some degree of autonomy, functionality, and re-entering the work force. To address the above gaps in hand prosthetic research and access to persons with limb loss, we propose to design a new prosthetic hand based on an artificial hand designed by the University of Pisa and the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), the Pisa/IIT SoftHand (SH). The design of the SH is based on the recently proposed approach of "soft synergies" that capitalizes on the combination of the concept of human hand synergies and novel soft robotics technologies. The SH was designed and implemented for robotics applications, and therefore its potential for prosthetic applications on patients with transradial amputation remains to be demonstrated. However, preliminary data suggest that healthy controls using the myoelectric version of the SH can grasp and manipulate a wide variety of objects with minimal training. The proposed studies were designed to pursue two aims: (1) to quantify the functional capabilities of the SH for prosthetic applications on intat individuals, and (2) to quantify the functional capabilities of the modified SH on persons with limb loss. The results of Aim 1 (year 1) will be used to implement design modifications to the SH (socket, EMG-based controller, force feedback interface) to be tested on patients (Aim 2, year 2). For both aims, we will use tasks used by clinicians for functional assessment of persons with upper limb loss, as well as biomechanical tests. We hypothesize that patients will learn to use the SH and perform grasp and manipulation tasks to a greater level than that allowed by their current terminal devices. The long-term objectives of this exploratory study are to provide an important foundation for a larger study focusing on (1) the design of a low- cost and high-performance hand prosthesis that will be accepted by persons with limb loss, and (2) enable performance of a wider range of ADL tasks than allowed by today's commercially available prostheses.