Realistic and Highly Functional Pediatric Externally Powered Prosthetic Hand Using Pneumatic Soft Actuators

Taniguchi, Hisanori; Takemoto, Nobuo; YAKAMI, Ren; Wakimoto, Shuichi; Oshikawa, Takero; Morinaga, Kosuke; Kanda, Takefumi

doi:10.20965/jrm.2020.p1034

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…To have an economically viable intervention at any stage of children's rapid growth, the entire cost of the prosthesis should be affordable. All myoelectric prostheses are imported in Japan, which drives the cost up to $15,000 [45]. Also, aesthetic prostheses cost around $3400 in the local market [46].…”

Section: 2) Phasementioning

confidence: 99%

A Personalized 3D-Printed Hand Prosthesis for Early Intervention in Children With Congenital Below-Elbow Deficiency: User-Centered Design Case Study

et al. 2023

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The adoption of prosthetic hands by children with congenital upper limb deficiency from a very early age has benefits in terms of reducing prosthesis abandonment, improving body image, and mitigating developmental and physiological complications that arise from the underuse of the deficit arm. However, current hand prostheses present drawbacks that make them not suitable for very young children. This study investigates the design requirements of a prosthesis for very young children with congenital below-elbow deficiency using a user-centered design (UCD) approach. The UCD puts the child at the center of the design process, with parents as mediators between the child and the design team. The study was conducted with an interdisciplinary team over three years, with several prototypes developed for different growth stages of the child. This paper presents the adopted UCD approach and its timeline, the iterative prototypes of the prosthesis developed throughout the study, and the final prototype with a focus on its child-friendly features. Finally, the paper describes the design requirements concluded from the study and the authors' recommendations for implementing prosthetic hands in below-elbow early intervention.INDEX TERMS Auditory biofeedback, children, congenital below-elbow deficiency, design implications, early intervention, hand prosthesis, in-liner electrodes, myoelectric control, user-centered design.

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Section: 2) Phasementioning

confidence: 99%

A Personalized 3D-Printed Hand Prosthesis for Early Intervention in Children With Congenital Below-Elbow Deficiency: User-Centered Design Case Study

et al. 2023

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“…Several fields of application currently in rapid expansion require improved soft actuation systems acting as ‘artificial muscles’ that are capable of large strains, high stresses, fast response and self-sensing and that show electrically safe operation, low specific weight and large compliance. As an example, one of those fields is wearable mechatronics, which aims to tightly interface the human body with actuation devices; such devices can find application in the creation of powered versions of systems as different as orthoses (to assist people with disabilities), exoskeletons (to augment body movements and forces) and prostheses (to replace missing body parts) [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Specific uses of such systems may benefit from actuators that have a soft structure, especially to increase the systems’ wearability and acceptability by users.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Easily Make Self-Sensing Pneumatic Inverse Artificial Muscles

Potnik,

Frediani,

Carpi

2024

Biomimetics

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Wearable mechatronics for powered orthoses, exoskeletons and prostheses require improved soft actuation systems acting as ‘artificial muscles’ that are capable of large strains, high stresses, fast response and self-sensing and that show electrically safe operation, low specific weight and large compliance. Among the diversity of soft actuation technologies under investigation, pneumatic devices have been the focus, during the last couple of decades, of renewed interest as an intrinsically soft artificial muscle technology, due to technological advances stimulated by applications in soft robotics. As of today, quite a few solutions are available to endow a pneumatic soft device with linear actuation and self-sensing ability, while also easily achieving these features with off-the-shelf materials and low-cost fabrication processes. Here, we describe a simple process to make self-sensing pneumatic actuators, which may be used as ‘inverse artificial muscles’, as, upon pressurisation, they elongate instead of contracting. They are made of an elastomeric tube surrounded by a plastic coil, which constrains radial expansions. As a novelty relative to the state of the art, the self-sensing ability was obtained with a piezoresistive stretch sensor shaped as a conductive elastomeric body along the tube’s central axis. Moreover, we detail, also by means of video clips, a step-by-step manufacturing process, which uses off-the-shelf materials and simple procedures, so as to facilitate reproducibility.

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“…Various prosthetic hands with different hand configurations have been developed. Some research reduces weight by employing artificial muscles [5], [6]. In the former research, two different versions were introduced.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%