TRIMANUAL · TRIMANUAL coordination assistance for hemiplegic stroke individuals

TRIMANUAL coordination assistance for hemiplegic stroke individuals

Artificial supernumerary limbs (SL) that assist their user with minimal cognitive effort and can be seamlessly controlled both independently and in combination with their natural limbs could revolutionise industry and surgery by allowing individuals to achieve actions that are otherwise impossible on their own. This could also have a profound impact on the life of disabled people by providing a mechanism capable of both replacing/restoring the functionality of the impaired limb without the need for amputation. The study of robotic limbs is well established, however, to date the capability of human users to use such devices for SLS has not been studied, nor has there been an interface developed that can be used intuitively. The development of an intuitive and easy to control interface for SLs would allow the benefits of supernumerary limbs to go from the lab to reality. They would allow a single individual to control more DoFs than they currently can so that they could perform two-person assembly tasks or surgical tasks without the need for a second individual and the communication issues that that can commonly lead to. However, the ultimate benefits possible for such an approach is limited by the overall capability of human users to augment their capability and control additional degrees of freedom. Such knowledge is therefore necessary for further developments within this field. Based on this, the project possesses the following overall objective: O1 To develop a non-invasive human-machine interface enabling rich command and feedback behaviours for everyday SL O2 To determine a control framework capable of executing independent and trimanual operations. O3 To implement a SL enabling people with upper-limb disabilities to execute common ADLs. At its conclusion the project has - Shown that a 4-DoF foot interface can be used for the real-time control of supernumerary limbs - Developed a novel 3-DoF haptic feedback scheme with which to communicate the task space position of the supernumerary limb to a user - Shown that human users can execute independent and trimanual operations using direct control - Identified that human users are more suited to performing trimanual actions when there is coupling rather than independence, and that with limited learning that their performance can exceed that of two users performing the same task However, because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic the project was not able to yet test an integrated version of this scheme onto individuals with upper-limb disabilities, however, this will be performed as possible in the near future.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз