Intuitive control of a prosthetic elbow

Abstract

Many transhumeral amputees deplore the lack of functionality of their prosthesis, mostly caused by a counter-intuitive control strategy. This work is the first implementation of an automatic prosthesis control approach based on natural coordinations between upper limb joints and IMU-based humeral orientation measurement. One healthy individual was able to use the prosthetic elbow, fitted with a prosthetic forearm and attached to the subject’s upper arm, to point at targets with an encouragingly small error.