Passive mechanical skin stretch for multiple degree-of-freedom proprioception in a hand prosthesis

Abstract

In this paper, we present a passive linear skin stretch device that can provide proprioceptive feedback for multiple degrees of freedom (DOF) in a prosthetic hand. In a 1-DOF virtual targeting task, subjects performed as well with our device as with a vibrotactile array, and significantly better (p < 0.05) than having no feedback at all. In a 3-DOF grip recognition task, subjects were able to classify six different grips with 88.0% accuracy. Training took 6 min and the average time to classification was 5.2 s. Subjects were also able to match a set of target grip apertures with 11.1% error on average.