Design and slip prevention control of a multi-sensory anthropomorphic prosthetic hand

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Zeng ◽  
Hongwei Liu ◽  
Hongzhou Song ◽  
Zhe Zhao ◽  
Shaowei Fan ◽  
...  

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to design a multi-sensory anthropomorphic prosthetic hand and a grasping controller that can detect the slip and automatically adjust the grasping force to prevent the slip. Design/methodology/approach To improve the dexterity, sensing, controllability and practicability of a prosthetic hand, a modular and multi-sensory prosthetic hand was presented. In addition, a slip prevention control based on the tactile feedback was proposed to improve the grasp stability. The proposed controller identifies slippages through detecting the high-frequency vibration signal at the sliding surface in real time and the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) was used to extract the eigenvalues to identify slippages. Once the slip is detected, a direct-feedback method of adjusting the grasp force related with the sliding times was used to prevent it. Furthermore, the stiffness of different objects was estimated and used to improve the grasp force control. The performances of the stiffness estimation, slip detection and slip control are experimentally evaluated. Findings It was found from the experiment of stiffness estimation that the accuracy rate of identification of the hard metal bottle could reach to 90%, while the accuracy rate of identification of the plastic bottles could reach to 80%. There was a small misjudgment rate in the identification of hard and soft plastic bottles. The stiffness of soft plastic bottles, hard plastic bottles and metal bottles were 0.64 N/mm, 1.36 N/mm and 32.55 N/mm, respectively. The results of slip detection and control show that the proposed prosthetic hand with a slip prevention controller can fast and effectively detect and prevent the slip for different disturbances, which has a certain application prospect. Practical implications Due to the small size, low weight, high integration and modularity, the prosthetic hand is easily applied to upper-limb amputees. Meanwhile, the method of the slip prevention control can be used for upper-limb amputees to complete more tasks stably in daily lives. Originality/value A multi-sensory anthropomorphic prosthetic hand is designed, and a method of stable grasps control based on slip detection by a tactile sensor on the fingertip is proposed. The method combines the stiffness estimation of the object and the real-time slip detection based on DWT with the design of the proportion differentiation robust controller based on a disturbance observer and the force controller to achieve slip prevention and stable grasps. It is verified effectively by the experiments and is easy to be applied to commercial prostheses.

Author(s):  
Bo Zeng ◽  
Shaowei Fan ◽  
Li Jiang ◽  
Hong Liu

Purpose This paper aims to present the design and experiment of a modular multisensory prosthetic hand for applications. Design and experiment of a modular multisensory hand for prosthetic applications. Design/methodology/approach This paper reveals more details focusing on the appearance, mechanism design, electrical design and control of the prosthetic hand considering anthropomorphism, dexterity, sensing and controllability. The finger is internally integrated with the actuator, the transmission mechanism, the sensors and the controller as a modular unit. Integrated with multiple sensors, the prosthetic hand can not only perceive the position, the contact force and the temperature of the environment like a human hand but also provide the foundation for the practical control. Findings The experiments show that the prosthetic hand can accurately control the contact force to achieve stable grasps based on the sensors feedback and a simple and effective force-tracking impedance control algorithm. In addition, the experiments based on the cosmesis validate not only the cosmesis functionality but also the control performance for a prosthesis–cosmesis system. Practical implications Because of the small size, low weight, high integration, modularity and controllability, the prosthetic hand is easily applied to upper-limb amputees. Meanwhile, the finger as a modular unit is easy to be fixed, maintained and applied to a partial upper-limb amputee. Originality/value Each modular finger of the prosthetic hand integrated with the actuator, the transmission mechanism, the sensors and the controller as a whole can independently control the position and the force. The cosmetic glove design can provide pretty appearance without compromising the control performance.


Author(s):  
Li Jiang ◽  
Bo Zeng ◽  
Shaowei Fan

Purpose – This paper presents a method to elaborate the selections of these parameters to achieve stable grasps. The performance of a prosthetic hand is mainly determined by its mechanical design. However, the effects of the geometric parameters of the hand configuration and the object sizes on the grasp stability are unknown. Design/methodology/approach – First, the thumb functions of human hands are analyzed based on the anatomical model, and the configuration characteristics of the thumbs for typical prosthetic hands are summarized. Then a method of optimizing the thumb configuration is proposed by measuring the kinematic transmission performance of robotics. On the basis of the thumb configuration analysis, a design method of the prosthetic hand configuration is proposed based on form closure theory. The discriminant function of form closure is used to analyze and determine the hand configuration parameters. Findings – An application of this method – the newly developed HIT V prosthetic hand – elaborates the optimization of the thumb configuration and the hand configuration, where the relation between the key hand configuration parameters and the discriminant function on condition of satisfying form closure, sustained by analytical equations and graphs, is revealed and visualized. An experimental verification shows that it is an effective method to design the prosthetic hand configuration available for grasping typical objects in our daily life. Originality/value – The paper shows how to easily determine the geometric dimensions of the palm, phalanges and hand configuration, so that the desired range of object sizes can be obtained.


2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yancheng Wang ◽  
◽  
Kailun Xi ◽  
Deqing Mei ◽  
Guanhao Liang ◽  
...  

[abstFig src='/00280003/14.jpg' width=""300"" text='A wearable tactile sensor array for three-axis contact force measurement and slip detection in prosthetic hand grasping' ] Using INASTAMOR pressure-conductive rubber as the sensing material, we developed a flexible tactile sensor array to measure three-axis contact force and slip. The sensor array has 9 (3 × 3) sensing units, each consisting of three layers, i.e., a bottom electrode, conductive rubber chips, a top polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) bump. We detailed the array’s structural design, working principle, and fabrication process. We also characterize the array’s three-axis force measurement performance. The full-scale force measurement ranges and sensitivities in <em>x</em>-, <em>y</em>-, and <em>z</em>-axes are characterized as 5, 5, 20 N and 0.675, 0.677, 0.251 V/N, respectively. The array is mounted on a prosthetic hand for detecting contact force and slip occurrence in grasping. Results showed that the array measures three-axis contact force and detects slippage by using discrete wavelet transformation. The tactile sensor array has potential applications in robot-hand grasping that require simultaneous slip detection and three-axis contact force measurement.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (23) ◽  
pp. 5209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Gonzalez-Rodriguez ◽  
Jose L. Ramon ◽  
Vicente Morell ◽  
Gabriel J. Garcia ◽  
Jorge Pomares ◽  
...  

The main goal of this study is to evaluate how to optimally select the best vibrotactile pattern to be used in a closed loop control of upper limb myoelectric prostheses as a feedback of the exerted force. To that end, we assessed both the selection of actuation patterns and the effects of the selection of frequency and amplitude parameters to discriminate between different feedback levels. A single vibrotactile actuator has been used to deliver the vibrations to subjects participating in the experiments. The results show no difference between pattern shapes in terms of feedback perception. Similarly, changes in amplitude level do not reflect significant improvement compared to changes in frequency. However, decreasing the number of feedback levels increases the accuracy of feedback perception and subject-specific variations are high for particular participants, showing that a fine-tuning of the parameters is necessary in a real-time application to upper limb prosthetics. In future works, the effects of training, location, and number of actuators will be assessed. This optimized selection will be tested in a real-time proportional myocontrol of a prosthetic hand.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2078
Author(s):  
Ning Liu ◽  
Qin Zhang ◽  
Shuangcheng Zhang ◽  
Xiaoli Wu

Real-time cycle slip detection and repair is one of the key issues in global positioning system (GPS) high precision data processing and application. In particular, when GPS stations are in special environments, such as strong ionospheric disturbance, sea, and high-voltage transmission line interference, cycle slip detection and repair in low elevation GPS observation data are more complicated than those in normal environments. For low elevation GPS undifferenced carrier phase data in different environments, a combined cycle slip detection algorithm is proposed. This method uses the first-order Gauss–Markov stochastic process to model the pseudorange multipath in the wide-lane phase minus narrow-lane pseudorange observation equation, and establishes the state equation of the wide-lane ambiguity with the pseudorange multipath as a parameter, and it uses the Kalman filter for real-time estimation and detects cycle slips based on statistical hypothesis testing with a predicted residual sequence. Meanwhile, considering there are certain correlations among low elevation, observation epoch interval, and ionospheric delay error, a second-order difference geometry-free combination cycle slip test is constructed that takes into account the elevation. By combining the two methods, real-time cycle slip detection for GPS low elevation satellite undifferenced data is achieved. A cycle slip repair method based on spatial search and objective function minimization criterion is further proposed to determine the correct solution of the cycle slips after they are detected. The whole algorithm is experimentally verified using the static and kinematic measured data of low elevation satellites under four different environments: normal condition, high-voltage transmission lines, dynamic condition in the sea, and ionospheric disturbances. The experimental results show that the algorithm can detect and repair cycle slips accurately for low elevation GPS undifferenced data, the difference between the float solution and the true value for the cycle slip does not exceed 0.5 cycle, and the differences obey the normal distribution overall. At the same time, the wide-lane ambiguity and second-order difference GF combination sequence calculated by the algorithm is smoother, which give further evidence that the algorithm for cycle slip detection and repair is feasible and effective, and has the advantage of being immune to the special observation environments.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 2184
Author(s):  
Andrea Mannelli ◽  
Francesco Papi ◽  
George Pechlivanoglou ◽  
Giovanni Ferrara ◽  
Alessandro Bianchini

Energy Storage Systems (EES) are key to further increase the penetration in energy grids of intermittent renewable energy sources, such as wind, by smoothing out power fluctuations. In order this to be economically feasible; however, the ESS need to be sized correctly and managed efficiently. In the study, the use of discrete wavelet transform (Daubechies Db4) to decompose the power output of utility-scale wind turbines into high and low-frequency components, with the objective of smoothing wind turbine power output, is discussed and applied to four-year Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) real data from multi-MW, on-shore wind turbines provided by the industrial partner. Two main research requests were tackled: first, the effectiveness of the discrete wavelet transform for the correct sizing and management of the battery (Li-Ion type) storage was assessed in comparison to more traditional approaches such as a simple moving average and a direct use of the battery in response to excessive power fluctuations. The performance of different storage designs was compared, in terms of abatement of ramp rate violations, depending on the power smoothing technique applied. Results show that the wavelet transform leads to a more efficient battery use, characterized by lower variation of the averaged state-of-charge, and in turn to the need for a lower battery capacity, which can be translated into a cost reduction (up to −28%). The second research objective was to prove that the wavelet-based power smoothing technique has superior performance for the real-time control of a wind park. To this end, a simple procedure is proposed to generate a suitable moving window centered on the actual sample in which the wavelet transform can be applied. The power-smoothing performance of the method was tested on the same time series data, showing again that the discrete wavelet transform represents a superior solution in comparison to conventional approaches.


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