Artificial skin for smart prosthetics****

缺乏感觉反馈是上肢截肢者放弃假肢的原因之一。实施这种反馈已被证明可以改善功能性假体操作，并使患者对他们的假体有更大的主人翁感。拟议中的研究将为上肢假肢用户提供感知触摸和压力的能力，并实现与触摸屏技术的交互。这项工作将使用创新的电容传感器技术，该技术价格低廉，功耗低，并且像人类皮肤一样可拉伸。该传感器皮肤使用可变形弹性体材料制造，该弹性体材料充当电介质以分离由导电炭黑材料制成的电极。使用这种分层结构，可以通过压缩时电介质厚度减小所产生的电容增加来检测压力。拟议的研究将把这种人造皮肤模制在上肢假肢上，形成手套状形状，传感点位于指尖。一个压力校准的微芯片将解释电容的变化，并将其转换为输入电流的臂带，产生经皮电神经刺激。这旨在为患者提供一种低成本、易于使用、非侵入性和多功能的设备，可应用于任何上肢假肢。目标结果包括改善患者对假肢的控制，使触摸屏设备的使用成为可能，以及通过用触觉刺激体现假肢来改善用户的主人翁感。总的来说，这项工作有助于假肢领域的技术进步。

A lack of sensory feedback is one reason why upper limb amputees abandon their prostheses. Implementing this feedback has been shown to improve functional prosthetic manipulation and give patients a greater sense of ownership over their prostheses. The proposed research will provide upper limb prosthetic users the ability to sense touch and pressure, as well as enabling interaction with touchscreen technologies. This work will use innovative capacitance sensor technology that is inexpensive, low-power, and stretchable like human skin. This sensor skin is fabricated using deformable elastomeric material that acts as a dielectric to separate electrodes made of conductive carbon black material. Using this layered structure, pressure can be detected by the increase in capacitance generated by a decrease in dielectric thickness upon compression. The proposed research will mold this artificial skin onto an upper limb prosthesis to form a glove-like shape, with sensing points located at the fingertips. A pressure-calibrated microchip will interpret changes in capacitance and convert them into input current for an armband that produces transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation. This aims to give patients access to a low-cost, easy-to-use, non-invasive and versatile device that can be applied to any upper limb prosthesis. Targeted outcomes include improved patient control of prostheses, enabling the use of touchscreen devices, and improvement in the user's sense of ownership by embodying the artificial limb with tactile stimulation. Overall, this work contributes to technical advances in the field of prosthetics.