Design and evaluation of a prosthetic shoulder controller.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Rehabilitation Engineering
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Advanced prosthetic arms require intuitive control systems for shoulder disarticulation and high transhumeral amputees.
• Existing methods for objectively evaluating prosthesis control performance are limited.
• Fitts Law provides a framework for quantifying human-computer interaction performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a 2 degree of freedom (DOF) upper limb controller for prosthetic shoulder joints, enabling shoulder elevation/depression and protraction/retraction.
• To establish an objective and quantitative evaluation protocol for prosthesis and control system performance, based on Fitts Law.
• To provide a versatile evaluation tool applicable to various reaching and pointing devices and their design variations.

Main Methods:

• Development of a 2 DOF upper limb controller using shoulder elevation/depression and protraction/retraction.
• Application of Fitts Law to create a quantitative performance evaluation protocol for prosthetic control.
• Testing the general applicability of the evaluation protocol for different devices and operational parameters.

Main Results:

• Successful development of a 2 DOF upper limb controller for advanced prosthetic applications.
• Establishment of a novel Fitts Law-based evaluation protocol for objective prosthesis control assessment.
• Demonstration of the protocol's broad applicability in comparing prosthetic devices and control strategies.

Conclusions:

• The developed 2 DOF controller offers a direct, proportional control scheme applicable to advanced prosthetics and other 2 DOF systems.
• The Fitts Law-based evaluation protocol provides a standardized, quantitative method for assessing prosthesis control performance.
• This research contributes to improved prosthetic functionality and provides a robust tool for future device development and comparative analysis.