A Semi-Autonomous Hierarchical Control Framework for Prosthetic Hands Inspired by Dual Streams of Human

The routine use of prosthetic hands significantly enhances amputees’ daily lives, yet it often introduces cognitive load and reduces reaction speed. To address this issue, we introduce a wearable semi-autonomous hierarchical control framework tailored for amputees. Drawing inspiration from the visua...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Xuanyi Zhou, Jianhua Zhang, Bangchu Yang, Xiaolong Ma, Hao Fu, Shibo Cai, Guanjun Bao
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024-01-01
Series:Biomimetics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2313-7673/9/1/62
Description
Summary:The routine use of prosthetic hands significantly enhances amputees’ daily lives, yet it often introduces cognitive load and reduces reaction speed. To address this issue, we introduce a wearable semi-autonomous hierarchical control framework tailored for amputees. Drawing inspiration from the visual processing stream in humans, a fully autonomous bionic controller is integrated into the prosthetic hand control system to offload cognitive burden, complemented by a Human-in-the-Loop (HIL) control method. In the ventral-stream phase, the controller integrates multi-modal information from the user’s hand–eye coordination and biological instincts to analyze the user’s movement intention and manipulate primitive switches in the variable domain of view. Transitioning to the dorsal-stream phase, precise force control is attained through the HIL control strategy, combining feedback from the prosthetic hand’s sensors and the user’s electromyographic (EMG) signals. The effectiveness of the proposed interface is demonstrated by the experimental results. Our approach presents a more effective method of interaction between a robotic control system and the human.
ISSN:2313-7673