A Redundant Trans-humeral Ortho-prosthesis with Novel Shoulder Orthosis for Human Like Motion Generation

摘要

Trans-humeral prostheses replace an amputated limb above elbow. An existing prosthesis needs a healthy stump arm to achieve its full functionality. However, the stump arm becomes weak due to various reasons. Trans-humeral ortho-prosthesis is a device which enables to use the trans-humeral prostheses even for the amputees with the weak stump arm by assisting the weak stump arm. This paper proposes a trans-humeral ortho-prosthesis with a novel redundant shoulder orthosis which enables the assistance to the stump arm while supporting the loads applied by the prosthesis. The combination of passive and active Degrees of Freedom (DoF) with redundancy at the introducing orthosis section, facilitates the trans-humeral ortho-prosthesis to adapt according to the anthropometry of the various amputees. Experiments have been carried out to evaluate the impact of the proposed 6DoF shoulder orthosis towards the human like motion generation of the trans-humeral ortho-prosthesis.