Dynamic Manipulation Skill Learning for Tactile Myoelectric Prosthetic Hands in Tool Handling

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Robotics
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Continuous tool operation with myoelectric prosthetic hands is challenging due to the need for stable, adaptive control under varying loads.
• Human motor control achieves stability via a biological sensorimotor closed loop, using tactile feedback to adapt to environmental changes.
• Existing prosthetic control strategies struggle with dynamic impacts and tracking delays, limiting functionality.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and evaluate a multimodal controller, the tactile, kinesthetic, and electromyography (EMG) bionic gripping controller (TKE-BGC), for enhanced prosthetic hand control.
• To develop a prosthetic control framework using human skill transfer that enables robust, end-to-end adaptive control.
• To improve stability, reduce tool drops, shorten task completion times, and lower physical workload for prosthetic users during tool manipulation.

Main Methods:

• Collected multimodal data (tactile, kinematic, EMG) from able-bodied users during tool manipulation using a data glove.
• Trained a TKE-BGC model using a Transformer encoder for feature extraction and a multilayer perceptron for real-time joint angle prediction.
• Developed a prosthetic control framework based on the TKE-BGC, enabling adaptive control through human skill transfer.

Main Results:

• The TKE-BGC framework demonstrated precise performance in 4 tool operation tasks, including unseen ones.
• Significantly reduced tool drops and task completion times compared to baseline methods.
• Achieved human-like average contact forces and substantially lowered user physical workload (e.g., reduced average EMG amplitude).

Conclusions:

• The TKE-BGC enables robust, adaptive control for myoelectric prosthetic hands, mimicking human sensorimotor feedback.
• This approach significantly improves performance in continuous tool use tasks, enhancing daily independence for amputees.
• The research has practical value for vocational rehabilitation and reemployment of individuals with limb loss.