Saturday 6 September 2014

Muscle controlled prosthetic device that identifies your intention

Around two thousand people in India lose their hands or a part of it every month. Many of them loose their means of livelihood with their hands. Efforts are going on across the world to give these hand amputees a normal life and if possible a livelihood. Brain controlled prosthetic devices reported by researchers are not only costly but also require invasive operation. A simplified design of the prosthesis could be one which operates by processing the EMG(Electro-myogram) signals. It should also have sensors that track the state of the hand and the actions that the user wants to perform. The software in the prosthetic hand can learn from these sample actions and can make those actions more intuitive. The nerves around the residual muscles of an amputee are still active and can be used to tap the signals being relayed from the brain. However, these signals can only be used for reach operations. Object grasping and manipulation are activities that require exact signals for maneuvering the fingers. Obtaining such signals is impossible in most amputees. Methods like synergical grasping have to be applied for obtaining robust grasp with limited signals. Intention detection can also be implemented by tracking and learning from the movement of the other working hand for executing everyday activities. Technologies like 3-D printing can custom produce such prosthetic for each amputee. India has requirements of such prosthetic at low cost. The imported prosthetic are costly, thus we should design and produce them in India.

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