System training and assessment in simultaneous proportional myoelectric prosthesis control

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Neuroprosthetics
• Rehabilitation Robotics

Background:

• Myoelectric control systems for prosthetic hands typically offer sequential control of one motion at a time.
• Recent advancements include proportional myoelectric control for finer user manipulation.
• Prosthesis guided training (PGT) has emerged as a method to enhance system reliability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a novel system for simultaneous proportional myoelectric control of a prosthetic hand with two motor functions.
• To compare the performance of simultaneous proportional control against other control strategies.

Main Methods:

• Developed a simultaneous proportional myoelectric control system for a two-function prosthetic hand (open/close, pro-/supination).
• Adapted PGT for proportional control and tested the system with two subjects.
• Evaluated performance using the Clothespin Relocation Task and Southampton Hand Assessment Procedure (SHAP).

Main Results:

• Simultaneous proportional control and mutex-based pattern recognition strategies performed equally well.
• Both simultaneous and mutex strategies were superior to traditional sequential control in outcome measures.
• This marks the first demonstration of simultaneous proportional myoelectric control on a forearm prosthesis.

Conclusions:

• Simultaneous proportional myoelectric control is feasible and effective for prosthetic hand applications.
• PGT is a promising training method for proportional myoelectric control.
• Further research with more subjects is needed to draw definitive conclusions.