The Design and Realisation of a 3D-Printed Myoelectric Prosthetic Arm for Toddlers Utilising Soft Grippers

A prosthetic device aims to improve an amputee’s ability to perform activities of daily living, by mimicking the function of a biological arm. The use of a prosthesis has also been shown to minimise some of the issues facing amputees, such as poor posture and muscular skeletal pain. Active, myoelectric-controlled prosthetic arms have primarily focused on adults, despite evidence showing the benefits of early adoption in reducing the rejection rates and aiding in proper motor neural development. This work presents SIMPA, a low-cost 3D-printed prosthetic arm with a soft-gripper based end device. The arm has been designed using CAD and 3D-scaning and manufactured using predominantly 3Dprinting techniques. This all serves the aim of reducing cost and lead-time, both crucial aspects for prosthetic manufacturing, particularly with the rapid growth rates of young children. A voluntary opening control system utilising an armband based (surface electromyography) sEMG has been developed concurrently. This simple control system acts as a base for more advanced control structures as the child develops. Grasp tests have resulted in an average effectiveness of 87%, with objects in excess of 400g being securely grasped. Force tests have shown that the arm is performing in line with current adult prosthetic devices. The results highlight the effectiveness of soft grippers as an end device in prosthetics, as well as viability of toddler-scale 3D-printed myoelectric devices

Impact of Ear Occlusion on In-Ear Sounds Generated by Intra-oral Behaviors

We conducted a case study with one volunteer and a recording setup to detect sounds induced by the actions: jaw clenching, tooth grinding, reading, eating, and drinking. The setup consisted of two in-ear microphones, where the left ear was semi-occluded with a commercially available earpiece and the right ear was occluded with a mouldable silicon ear piece. Investigations in the time and frequency domains demonstrated that for behaviors such as eating, tooth grinding, and reading, sounds could be recorded with both sensors. For jaw clenching, however, occluding the ear with a mouldable piece was necessary to enable its detection. This can be attributed to the fact that the mouldable ear piece sealed the ear canal and isolated it from the environment, resulting in a detectable change in pressure. In conclusion, our work suggests that detecting behaviors such as eating, grinding, reading with a semi-occluded ear is possible, whereas, behaviors such as clenching require the complete occlusion of the ear if the activity should be easily detectable. Nevertheless, the latter approach may limit real-world applicability because it hinders the hearing capabilities.</p

Humanoid Robots

For many years, the human being has been trying, in all ways, to recreate the complex mechanisms that form the human body. Such task is extremely complicated and the results are not totally satisfactory. However, with increasing technological advances based on theoretical and experimental researches, man gets, in a way, to copy or to imitate some systems of the human body. These researches not only intended to create humanoid robots, great part of them constituting autonomous systems, but also, in some way, to offer a higher knowledge of the systems that form the human body, objectifying possible applications in the technology of rehabilitation of human beings, gathering in a whole studies related not only to Robotics, but also to Biomechanics, Biomimmetics, Cybernetics, among other areas. This book presents a series of researches inspired by this ideal, carried through by various researchers worldwide, looking for to analyze and to discuss diverse subjects related to humanoid robots. The presented contributions explore aspects about robotic hands, learning, language, vision and locomotion

主要生活動作を実現した義手用軽量ロボットハンドの開発

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