A transhumeral prosthesis with an artificial neuromuscular system: Sim2real-guided design, modeling, and control

Alexander Toedtheide, Edmundo Pozo Fortunić, Johannes Kühn, Elisabeth Jensen, Sami Haddadin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this work we introduce a new type of human-inspired upper-limb prostheses. The Artificial Neuromuscular Prosthesis (ANP) imitates the human neuromuscular system in the sense of its compliance, backdrivability, natural motion, proprioceptive sensing, and kinesthetics. To realize this challenging goal, we introduce a novel human-inspired and simulation-based development paradigm to design the prosthesis mechatronics in correspondence to the human body. The ANP provides body awareness, contact awareness, and human-like contact response, realized via floating base rigid-body models, disturbance observers, and joint impedance control—concepts known from established state-of-the-art robotics. The ANP mechatronics is characterized by a four degrees of freedom (dof) torque-controlled human-like kinematics, a tendon-driven 2-dof wrist, and spatial orientation sensing at a weight of 1.7 kg (without hand and battery). The paper deals with the rigorous mathematical modeling, control, design and evaluation of this device type along initially defined requirements within a single prototype only. The proposed systemic and grasping capabilities are verified under laboratory conditions by an unimpaired user. Future work will increase the technology readiness level of the next generation device, where human studies with impaired users will be done.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)942-980
Number of pages39
JournalInternational Journal of Robotics Research
Volume43
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2024

Keywords

  • Upper limb prostheses
  • bionics
  • floating base systems
  • impedance control
  • soft and tactile robots

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