Wearable EMG Band with Haptic Feedback Offers Impressively Dexterous Control of a Robotic Hand

Designed to read movement intentions over EMG and provide tactile feedback, this wearable offers fine-grained control with minimum training.

Scientists at Florida Atlantic University and the University of Utah have developed a soft-robotic armband designed to provide fine-grained control of prosthetic limbs — and haptic feedback for its users.

"Enabling refined dexterous control [in prosthetic limbs] is a highly complex problem to solve and continues to be an active area of research because it necessitates not only the interpretation of human grasp control intentions, but also complementary haptic feedback of tactile sensations," says Stella Batalama, PhD and dean of the FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science, of the work.

"With this innovative study, our researchers are addressing the loss of tactile sensations, which is currently a major roadblock in preventing upper limb-absent people from multitasking or using the full dexterity of their prosthetic hands."

A wearable armband with haptic feedback gives users impressively dexterous control of this robot hand. (šŸ“¹: Abd et al)

The study used a custom-built multichannel bimodal soft-robotic armband, designed to use electromyographic (EMG) sensors to read the user's intentions and to provide feedback using soft actuators and vibrotactile stimulators. Using this, participants were able to "feel" contact forces at the thumb, index, and little finger of a robotic hand — with a warning vibration if the hand is squeezing an object too hard.

Participants were asked to grasp and transport two objects simultaneously without breaking or dropping them, initially while being able to see the object but later without direct sight — relying entirely on the haptic feedback system.

"Our study is the first to demonstrate the feasibility of this complex simultaneous control task while integrating multiple channels of haptic feedback non-invasively," says Erik Engeberg, PhD, corresponding author and FAU professor. "None of our study participants had significant prior use of EMG-controlled artificial hands, yet they were able to learn to harness this multitasking functionality after two short training sessions."

"Examples of multi-function control demonstrated in our study included the proportional control of a card being pinched between the index and middle fingers at the same time that the thumb and little finger were used to unscrew the lid of a water bottle," adds first author Moaed A. Abd. "Another simultaneous control demonstration was with a ball that was grasped with three fingers while the little finger was simultaneously used to toggle a light switch."

The team's work has been published under open-access terms in the journal Scientific Reports.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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