Smart skin for tactile prosthetics

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of a concept for a Smart Skin, for enabling tactile prosthetics that provide for a natural sensation of touch. The solution embeds miniature, ultra-low power, wireless sensors into the silicone coating of the prosthetic. The solution offers advantages in terms of scalability, ability to place the sensors almost anywhere, fault tolerance and potential ease of manufacturing

“Low road” to rehabilitation: a perspective on subliminal sensory neuroprosthetics

“…This has been previously described by Richard et al 108 Additionally, we would also suggest utilization of modern neuroprosthetics such as smart skins to enhance afferent inputs from skin receptors to aid in multisensory integration, and relearning. 109 …”

FM-UWB: Towards a Robust, Low-Power Radio for Body Area Networks

“…Even though there is a penalty when it comes to sensitivity, this receiver can still distinguish multiple FM-UWB signals, and provide SC-FDMA, which is a useful property in dense WBANs. In fact, the aforementioned receiver was designed specifically for communication between the nodes on a prosthetic limb [ 2 ] and trades sensitivity for power consumption and FDMA capability. In cases where higher path losses are expected and the number of nodes is smaller, such as in [ 15 ], a different receiver would be more optimal.…”

“…One example is the WiseSkin concept ( Figure 1 ), where sensor nodes embedded in a kind of artificial skin are placed on top of a prosthetic arm. The nodes communicate wirelessly between each other and transmit the information from sensors to the central processing unit that drives the actuators and provides a sense of touch to the patient [ 2 ]. The WiseSkin application is one example of a High-Density Wireless Sensor Network (HD-WSN).…”

Characterization of Pneumatic Touch Sensors for a Prosthetic Hand

“…Because most commercial sensors only detect a load applied in the center of a sensor, there is now a trend toward making sensors that are flexible and can be attached to a curved surface, such as a fingertip, and also to cover a larger area. Some studies have developed sensing skins [25]- [27], whereas others have developed sensors that use liquids [28]- [30] or air bladders [31], [32]. The latter sensors, integrated into a glove, are constructed to be as anthropomorphic as possible to imitate a real hand.…”