Advanced Prosthetic Hand Provides Natural Sense of Touch, Connection

摘要

Designers of prosthetics often focus mainly on their mechanical capabilities, their ease of use, and their ability to provide natural movement. However, there is a psychological aspect that designers are beginning to explore through sensory-enabled prosthetics. Recently, a team at Case Western Reserve University discovered that a sense of touch encourages users to wear the prosthetics more regularly and for longer periods of time. They also feel more confident to interact with their environment and loved ones.The team engaged in the first known study of amputees wearing advanced, sensory-enabled prosthetics in everyday life. These prostheses achieve a sense of "touch" using direct interfaces attached to the nerves of the wearers. The researchers found that by receiving sensory feedback from the hand, study participants used the mechanical appendage more often than a typical prosthetic.Moreover, the amputees had more of a general sense of psychological well-being from the use of the hand, seeing it more as a typical hand and less as merely a tool to be used sporadically, said Dustin Tyler, a professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve and associate director of the Advanced Platform Technology Center at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center. "When they're in the lab, many subjects (in previous studies) have described their prosthesis as nothing more than a tool attached to the end of their residual arm," he said. Tyler worked on the research with Emily Graczyk, a post-doctoral researcher at Case Western Reserve University.