A Wearable Ultrasound Interface for Prosthetic Hand Control

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Wearable Technology
• Human-Machine Interface

Background:

• Ultrasound technology offers non-invasive muscle deformation detection with potential for prosthetic hand control.
• Traditional ultrasound devices are too bulky for practical wearable applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a compact ultrasound system integrated into a prosthetic hand socket for enhanced prosthetic control.
• To assess the performance of the integrated ultrasound system in recognizing hand gestures for practical prosthetic use.

Main Methods:

• A miniaturized ultrasound system with four A-mode transducers was designed and integrated into a prosthetic hand socket.
• Twenty subjects performed six common gestures, with ultrasound signals analyzed offline and online.
• Four classification algorithms were used to decode ultrasound signals for gesture recognition.

Main Results:

• The integrated ultrasound system measured 65*75*25 mm and weighed 85 g.
• Online classification accuracy for hand gestures was 91.5% with the prosthetic and 96.5% without.
• While wearing the prosthetic influenced accuracy, remarkable online performance was maintained.

Conclusions:

• The developed integrated ultrasound system is effective for practical prosthetic hand control.
• This technology paves the way for advanced human-machine interface systems in prosthetics.