Though prostheses have advanced to complex interfaces of devices and biological systems, researchers are not satisfied with that progress. A research collaboration at Arizona State University (ASU), Mayo Clinic, Florida International University, and the Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, Italy, are applying advances in bioengineering, robotics, and brain-machine interface systems to develop prosthetic hands that enable users to feel sensation and judge how much force to exert in gripping, lifting, moving, and holding objects.
“Users of commercially available prostheses still must always look at what the artificial hand is doing to be able to properly control it, because current technology cannot fully compensate for the lack of feedback when, for instance, a user is touching or manipulating an object,” said Marco Santello, PhD, the director of the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, and a neurophysiologist who directs ASU’s Neural Control of Movement Laboratory. The challenge is to construct a seamless integration of the nervous system with a myoelectric prosthetic hand that is controlled by electrical signals generated naturally by the user’s muscles, Santello said.
He and his collaborators are fellow principal investigators or co-principal investigators on three prosthetics research projects for which Santello has been awarded grants in the past two years. The National Institutes of Health has been funding work to identify strengths and weaknesses of a “synergy-based artificial hand” through a variety of tests involving grasping and manipulation tasks. Research aimed at optimizing the integration of sensory feedback into prosthetics to control movement and manipulation is supported by a joint ASU-Mayo Clinic Team Science Seed Grant. That project focuses on testing non-invasive feedback systems for hand prostheses and users’ adaptations to integrating artificial feedback with prosthesis control. Another project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has developed a new neural-enabled system that uses implanted electronics to provide tactile sensation to amputees based on information derived from sensors on a prosthetic hand.
Help in finding solutions could come by way of Santello’s role as the ASU principal investigator in the Building Reliable Advances and Innovation in Neurotechnology (BRAIN) Center, a recently established National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center. Led by ASU and the University of Houston, the BRAIN Center focuses on developing and testing new neural technologies. It will involve industry and clinical partners and include testing technologies designed to improve a wide range of the sensory, motor, and cognitive functions, such as those that researchers want to put into new kinds of prosthetic devices.
Editor’s note: This story was adapted from materials provided by Arizona State University.
