A Review of Non-Invasive Haptic Feedback stimulation Techniques for Upper Extremity Prostheses

A sense of touch is essential for amputees to reintegrate into their social and work life. The design of the next generation of the prostheses will have the ability to effectively convey the tactile information between the amputee and the artificial limbs. This work reviews non-invasive haptic feedback stimulation techniques to convey the tactile information from the prosthetic hand to the amputee’s brain. Various types of actuators that been used to stimulate the patient’s residual limb for different types of artificial prostheses in previous studies have been reviewed in terms of functionality, effectiveness, wearability and comfort. The non-invasive hybrid feedback stimulation system was found to be better in terms of the stimulus identification rate of the haptic prostheses’ users. It can be conclude that integrating hybrid haptic feedback stimulation system with the upper limb prostheses leads to improving its acceptance among users

Design an Interfacing Tracking System in Rehabilitation Therapies Between The Elbow Joint of The Human Arm and The Prosthetic Arm

Myoelectric prostheses have seen an increased application in clinical practice and research, due to their potential for good functionality and versatility. Yet, myoelectric prostheses still suffer from a lack of intuitive control and haptic feedback, which can frustrate users and lead to abandonment. To address this problem, a prosthetic arm was designed to help the amputees, who unfortunately lost their upper limb. Then, the prosthetic arm was equipped with a hybrid haptic feedback stimulation system to compensate for the missing sensation and enable the amputees to easily perform their normal life activities. The tracking system between the elbow joints of the human and the prosthetic arms was required to accomplish the experimental tests with the able-body subjects. Accordingly, this study is a platform for the main project. The major problem is to synchronize the movements of the prosthetic arm’s elbow joint with the human arm’s elbow joint within a high response, acceptable accuracy, and low error. Therefore, the PID controller was used to control the tracking system and the flexible bending sensor was attached to the volunteer’s elbow joint to record its rotational movements. The results verified the functionality of the proposed tracking system to synchronize the joints movements and enable the prosthetic arm to follow the movements of the volunteer’s arm within 0.062 sec. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed elbow joints tracking system to synchronize the motions of the volunteer and he prosthetic arms was concluded. &nbsp

A Hybrid Haptic Feedback Stimulation Prosthetic Device to Recover the Missing Sensation of Upper Extremity Amputees

Anon-invasive hybrid haptic feedback stimulation system that can sense the contact pressure was designed for a prosthetic hand, in order to recover the missing sensation of the amputation patients. The main objective of this work is to develop and evaluate the first step of a novel approach for a lightweight, 7 Degrees-Of-Freedom (DOF) prosthetic arm to perform an effective object manipulation and grasping. Furthermore, to convey the tactile information about the contact pressure with high identification accuracy. However, a novel wearable hybrid pressure-vibration haptic feedback stimulation device for providing the tactile information about the contact pressure between the prosthetic hand and the grasped objects to the user’s brain is designed to achieve the main objective of this study. An evaluation of sensation and response has been conducted with forty healthy subjects to evaluate the ability of the haptic system to stimulate the human nervous system. The results in term of Stimulus Identification Rate (SIR) presented that the whole participants were correctly able to discriminate the sensation of touch, stare of touch, end of touch, and grasping objects. While 94%, and 96% of the entire stimuli were successfully identified by the volunteers during the experiments of slippage, pressure level, respectively

A hybrid haptic stimulation prosthetic wearable device to recover the missing sensation of the upper limb amputees

A hybrid haptic feedback stimulation system that is capable in sensing the contact pressure, the surface texture, and the temperature, simultaneously, was designed for a prosthetic hand to provide a tactile sensation to amputation patients. In addition, the haptic system was developed to enable the prosthetic’s users to implement withdrawal reflexes due to the thermal noxious stimulus in a quick manner. The re-sensation is achieved by non-invasively stimulating the skin of the patients’ residual limbs, based on the type and the level of tactile signals provided by the sensory system of the prostheses. Accordingly, three stages of design and development were performed to satisfy the research methodology. A vibrotactile prosthetic device, which is designed for the detection of contact pressure and surface texture in upper extremity, represents. While, the design of a novel wearable hybrid pressure-vibration haptic feedback stimulation device for conveying the tactile information regarding the contact pressure between the prosthetic hand and the grasped objects represents the second methodology stage. Lastly, the third stage was achieved by designing a novel hybrid pressure-vibration-temperature feedback stimulation system to provide a huge information regarding the prostheses environment to the users without brain confusing or requiring long pre-training. The main contribution of this work is the development and evaluation of the first step of a novel approach for a lightweight, 7 Degrees-Of-Freedom (DOF) tactile prosthetic arm to perform an effective as well as fast object manipulation and grasping. Furthermore, this study investigates the ability to convey the tactile information about the contact pressure, surface texture, and object temperature to the amputees with high identification accuracy by mean of using the designed hybrid pressure-vibration-temperature feedback wearable device. An evaluation of sensation and response has been conducted on forty healthy volunteers to evaluate the ability of the haptic system to stimulate the human nervous system. The results in term of Stimulus Identification Rate (SIR) show that all the volunteers were correctly able to discriminate the sensation of touch, start of touch, end of touch, and grasping objects. While 94%, 96%, 97%, and 95.24% of the entire stimuli were successfully identified by the volunteers during the experiments of slippage, pressure level, surface texture, and temperature, respectively. The position tracking controller system was designed to synchronize the movements of the volunteers’ elbow joints and the prosthetic’s elbow joint to record the withdrawal reflexes. The results verified the ability of the haptic system to excite the human brain at the abnormal noxious stimulus and enable the volunteers to perform a quick withdrawal reflex within 0.32 sec. The test results and the volunteers' response established evidence that amputees are able to recover their sense of the contact pressure, the surface texture, and the object temperature as well as to perform thermal withdrawal reflexes using the solution developed in this work

A hybrid haptic stimulation wearable device to recover the missing sensation of the upper extremity prostheses’ users

A hybrid haptic feedback stimulation system that is capable in sensing the surface texture, and the temperature, simultaneously, was designed for a prosthetic hand to provide a tactile sensation to amputation patients. In addition, the haptic system was developed to enable the prosthetic’s users to implement withdrawal reflexes due to the thermal noxious stimulus in a quick manner. The re-sensation is achieved by non-invasively stimulating the skin of the patients’ residual limbs, based on the type and the level of tactile signals provided by the sensory system of the prostheses. Accordingly, a novel hybrid pressure-vibration- temperature feedback stimulation system was design to provide a huge information regarding the prostheses environment to the users without brain confusing or requiring long pre-training. An evaluation of sensation and response will be performed with healthy volunteers to evaluate the ability of the haptic system to stimulate the human nervous system. The results were presented in term of Stimulus Identification Rate (SIR). The test results and the volunteers' response established evidence that amputees are able to recover their sense of the contact pressure, the surface texture, and the object temperature as well as to perform thermal withdrawal reflexes using the solution developed in this work

Comparative Computational Study of Mechanical Behavior in Self-Expanding Femoropopliteal Stents

The use of the stent to treat peripheral artery disease (PAD) is increased and the proportion of failures also increases. The femoropopliteal artery (FPA) experiences a high deformation ratio compared to the cardiovascular artery due to limp flexion and daily activities that could lead to stent failure, as well as increasing the number of observed mortality and morbidity. In the present work, two of the common PAD stent design models represented as STENT I and STENT II were analyzed by using of finite element method (FEM) to simulate the most mechanical loading modes that could occur in FPA, such as axial tension and compression, torsion, three-point bending and radial compression to give a good understanding of deformation that affected stent inside the in-vivo. The gradual force load was used to simulate all modes, the force values are 0.25 N, 0.5 N, 1.5 N, 2.5 N, 3.5 N and 5.5 N until the stent models obtain the yield-point. The comparison of stent models (STENT I, STENT II) was performed in terms of graphs of total deformation, force-stress and stress-strain for all test modes. The similarity ratio of the total deformation in axial tension and the compression mode for STENT I and STENT II was 17% and that may indicate that STENT I obtained a high deformation value instead of STENT II, while, the torsion similarity ratio was 86% which could show a good agreement in this mode, as well as the similarity ratio, was 78% of the total three-point bending deformation and the value of the similarity ratio in the radial compression mode was 23%. Still unclear what is the clinical mode of mechanical deformation that is more important than others with changing the length of the lesion and stent diameter, and the fatigue life test provides a better understanding of the mechanical tests that must be sought

A Novel Method for Vibrotactile Proprioceptive Feedback Using Spatial Encoding and Gaussian Interpolation

Objective: The bidirectional communication between the user and the prosthesis is an important requirement when developing prosthetic hands. Proprioceptive feedback is fundamental to perceiving prosthesis movement without the need for constant visual attention. We propose a novel solution to encode wrist rotation using a vibromotor array and Gaussian interpolation of vibration intensity. The approach generates tactile sensation that smoothly rotates around the forearm congruently with prosthetic wrist rotation. The performance of this scheme was systematically assessed for a range of parameter values (number of motors and Gaussian standard deviation). Methods: Fifteen able-bodied subjects and one individual with congenital limb deficiency used vibrational feedback to control the virtual hand in the target-achievement test. Performance was assessed by end-point error and efficiency as well as subjective impressions. Results: The results showed a preference for smooth feedback and a higher number of motors (8 and 6 versus 4). With 8 and 6 motors, the standard deviation, determining the sensation spread and continuity, could be modulated through a broad range of values (0.1 - 2) without a significant performance loss (error: ∼ 10%; efficiency: ∼ 30%). For low values of standard deviation (0.1-0.5), the number of motors could be reduced to 4 without a significant performance decrease. Conclusion: The study demonstrated that the developed strategy provided meaningful rotation feedback. Moreover, the Gaussian standard deviation can be used as an independent parameter to encode an additional feedback variable. Significance: The proposed method is a flexible and effective approach to providing proprioceptive feedback while adjusting the trade-off between sensation quality and the number of vibromotors

Design of a hybrid haptic wearable device for upper limb amputees to recover the missing sensation

A hybrid haptic feedback stimulation system that is capable of sensing surface texture, and temperature, simultaneously, was designed in this work for prosthetic hand to provide a tactile sensation to amputation patients. In addition, the haptic system was developed to enable the prosthetic’s users to implement withdrawal reflexes due to the thermal noxious stimulus in a quick manner, i.e. in a fast and effective technique. The re-sensation is achieved by non-invasively feedback stimulating the skin of the patients’ residual limbs, based on the type and the level of tactile signals provided by the sensory system of the prostheses. Accordingly, a novel hybrid pressure-vibration-temperature feedback stimulation system was design to provide a huge information regarding the prostheses environment to the users without brain confusion or require long pre-training. Evaluations of sensation and response were performed with healthy volunteers to evaluate the ability of the haptic system to stimulate the human nervous system. The results in term of Stimulus Identification Rate (SIR) show that all the volunteers were correctly able to discriminate the sensation of touch, start of touch, end of touch, and grasping objects. While 94%, 96%, 97%, and 95.24% of the entire stimuli were successfully identified by the volunteers during the experiments of slippage, pressure level, surface texture, and temperature, respectively. In addition, the results verified the ability of the haptic system to excite the human brain at the abnormal noxious stimulus and enable the volunteers to perform a quick withdrawal reflex within 0.32 seconds. The test results and the volunteers' responses established evidence that amputees are able to recover their sense of the contact pressure, the surface texture, and the object temperature as well as to perform thermal withdrawal reflexes using the solution developed in this work

Comprehensive concept-phase system safety analysis for hybrid-electric vehicles utilizing automated driving functions

2019 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.Automotive system safety (SS) analysis involving automated driving functions (ADFs) and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) is an active subject of research but highly proprietary. A comprehensive SS analysis and a risk informed safety case (RISC) is required for all complex hybrid-vehicle builds especially when utilizing ADFs and ADAS. Industry standard SS procedures have been developed and are accessible but contain few detailed instructions or references for the process of completing a thorough automotive SS analysis. In this work, a comprehensive SS analysis is performed on an SAE-Level 2 autonomous hybrid-vehicle architecture in the concept phase which utilizes lateral and longitudinal automated corrective control actions. This paper first outlines a proposed SS process including a cross-functional SS working group procedure, followed by the development of an item definition inclusive of the ADFs and ADAS and an examination of 5 hazard analysis and risk assessment (HARA) techniques common to the automotive industry that were applied to 11 vehicle systems, and finally elicits the safety goals and functional requirements necessary for safe vehicle operation. The results detail functional failures, causes, effects, prevention, and mitigation methods as well as the utility of, and instruction for completing the various HARA techniques. The conclusion shows the resulting critical safety concerns for an SAE Level-2 autonomous system can be reduced through the use of the developed list of 116 safety goals and 950 functional safety requirements

Diseño e implementación de un dispositivo de estiramiento cutáneo orientado a prótesis mioeléctricas transradiales que proporcione información propioceptiva

La búsqueda de la mejor estrategia y/o mecanismo para transmitir la información sensorial a usuarios de prótesis mioeléctricas es un tema de interés por parte de la comunidad científica debido a que las mismas son rechazadas por la ineficiencia o nulidad de dispositivos hápticos. Así pues, siendo la propiocepción parte de la retroalimentación sensorial perdida, el presente trabajo de investigación tiene como objetivo el diseño e implementación de un dispositivo háptico de estiramiento cutáneo longitudinal orientado a prótesis mioeléctricas transradiales que proporcione información propioceptiva. El diseño mecánico propuesto se desarrolla considerando la norma alemana VDI 2206 y una evaluación técnico-económica basada en la norma VDI 2225. Asimismo, se evalúa la relación a establecerse entre el actuador y el sensor de flexión para evitar el “efecto de aumento”. Más aún, se realiza la evaluación de dos diferentes métodos de fijación a la piel (neopreno y cinta adhesiva de doble cara) a través de dos encuestas cuantitativas subjetivas en base al experimento de la caja de espejo. En cuanto a los resultados con respecto al diseño mecánico, se establece la confiabilidad del mismo dados los parámetros mecánicos obtenidos tras el análisis de elementos finitos. Por otro lado, se establece el empleo del mapeo lineal para relacionar el sensor y el actuador del dispositivo al permitir la distribución correcta de los datos. Finalmente, los resultados de la evaluación del método de fijación a la piel revelan que no existen diferencias estadísticamente significativas al proporcionar información propioceptiva (p = 0.213); análogamente, se destaca la viabilidad de la espuma de neopreno como método de fijación. En síntesis, el diseño planteado puede reducir el rechazo de las prótesis mioeléctricas a través del método de modalidad emparejada expuesto y, dado el diseño planteado, el empleo de la espuma de neopreno se presenta como una solución más viable dada su naturaleza no adhesiva.Campus Lima Centr