scholarly journals Comparison between rigid and soft poly-articulated prosthetic hands in non-expert myo-electric users shows advantages of soft robotics

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Capsi-Morales ◽  
Cristina Piazza ◽  
Manuel G. Catalano ◽  
Giorgio Grioli ◽  
Lisa Schiavon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Comprehensive Evaluation ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Soft Robotics ◽  
User Perception ◽  
Robotic Hands ◽  
Prosthetic Hands ◽  
Emerging Trends ◽  
Functional Assessments

AbstractNotwithstanding the advancement of modern bionic hands and the large variety of prosthetic hands in the market, commercial devices still present limited acceptance and percentage of daily use. While commercial prostheses present rigid mechanical structures, emerging trends in the design of robotic hands are moving towards soft technologies. Although this approach is inspired by nature and could be promising for prosthetic applications, there is scant literature concerning its benefits for end-users and in real-life scenarios. In this work, we evaluate and assess the role and the benefits of soft robotic technologies in the field of prosthetics. We propose a thorough comparison between rigid and soft characteristics of two poly-articulated hands in 5 non-expert myo-electric prosthesis users in pre- and post-therapeutic training conditions. The protocol includes two standard functional assessments, three surveys for user-perception, and three customized tests to evaluate the sense of embodiment. Results highlight that rigid hands provide a more precise grasp, while soft properties show higher functionalities thanks to their adaptability to different requirements, intuitive use and more natural execution of activities of daily living. This comprehensive evaluation suggests that softness could also promote a quick integration of the system in non-expert users.

scholarly journals Anthropomorphism Index of Mobility for Artificial Hands

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Immaculada Llop-Harillo ◽  
Antonio Pérez-González ◽  
Verónica Gracia-Ibáñez
Keyword(s):  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Dominant Hand ◽  
Robotic Hands ◽  
Prosthetic Hands ◽  
Human Likeness ◽  
Artificial Hand ◽  
Bimanual Grasping

The increasing development of anthropomorphic artificial hands makes necessary quick metrics that analyze their anthropomorphism. In this study, a human grasp experiment on the most important grasp types was undertaken in order to obtain an Anthropomorphism Index of Mobility (AIM) for artificial hands. The AIM evaluates the topology of the whole hand, joints and degrees of freedom (DoFs), and the possibility to control these DoFs independently. It uses a set of weighting factors, obtained from analysis of human grasping, depending on the relevance of the different groups of DoFs of the hand. The computation of the index is straightforward, making it a useful tool for analyzing new artificial hands in early stages of the design process and for grading human-likeness of existing artificial hands. Thirteen artificial hands, both prosthetic and robotic, were evaluated and compared using the AIM, highlighting the reasons behind their differences. The AIM was also compared with other indexes in the literature with more cumbersome computation, ranking equally different artificial hands. As the index was primarily proposed for prosthetic hands, normally used as nondominant hands in unilateral amputees, the grasp types selected for the human grasp experiment were the most relevant for the human nondominant hand to reinforce bimanual grasping in activities of daily living. However, it was shown that the effect of using the grasping information from the dominant hand is small, indicating that the index is also valid for evaluating the artificial hand as dominant and so being valid for bilateral amputees or robotic hands.

scholarly journals Edge Computing-Based Self-Organized Device Network for Awareness Activities of Daily Living in the Home

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 2475
Author(s):  
Seong Su Keum ◽  
Yu Jin Park ◽  
Soon Ju Kang
Keyword(s):  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Smart Home ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Edge Computing ◽  
Brain Diseases ◽  
Portable Devices ◽  
Brain Health ◽  
Self Organized

Activities of daily living (ADL) are important indicators for awareness of brain health in the elderly, and hospitals use ADL as a standard test for diagnosing chronic brain diseases such as dementia. However, since it is difficult to judge real-life ADL in hospitals, doctors typically predict ADL ability through interviews with patients or accompanying caregivers. Recently, many studies have attempted to diagnose accurate brain health by collecting and analyzing the real-life ADL of patients in their living environments. However, most of these were conducted by constructing and implementing expensive smart homes with the concept of centralized computing, and ADL data were collected from simple data about patients’ home appliance usage and the surrounding environment. Despite the high cost of building a smart home, the collected ADL data are inadequate for predicting accurate brain health. In this study, we developed and used three types of portable devices (wearable, tag, and stationary) that can be easily installed and operated in typical existing houses. We propose a self-organized device network structure based on edge computing that can perform user perception, location perception, and behavioral perception simultaneously. This approach enables us to collect user activity data, analyze ADL in real-time to determine if the user’s behavior was successful or abnormal, and record the physical ability of the user to move between fixed spaces. The characteristics of this proposed system enable us to distinguish patients from other family members and provide real-time notifications after a forgetful or mistaken action. We implemented devices that constitute the edge network of the smart home scenario and evaluated the performance of this system to verify its usefulness.

scholarly journals Profinteg: A Tool for Real-Life Assessment of Activities of Daily Living in Patients with Cognitive Impairment

2013 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Anselme ◽  
Martine Poncelet ◽  
Sharon Bouwens ◽  
Stephanie Knips ◽  
Françoise Lekeu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Life Assessment

Towards a Soft Robotic 3rd Arm for Activities of Daily Living

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weston R. Olson ◽  
Panagiotis Polygerinos
Keyword(s):  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
The Body ◽  
Soft Robotics ◽  
Aircraft Fuselage ◽  
Supernumerary Limbs ◽  
Recent Addition ◽  
Soft Actuators ◽  
Human Limb

Limb sensorimotor function plays an important role in activities of daily living (ADLs) and quality of life. Spinal cord dysfunctions, such as cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM), often affect limb function and limit independence. In this paper, we apply technologies from the emerging field of soft robotics to develop Soft Robotic 3rd Arms (SR3As) that branch out of the body — thus providing an artificial limb that enables effective execution of ADLs for CSM patients and the like. Soft robotics is a fairly recent addition to the field of robotics. Differing from traditional, “hard”, robotics, soft robotics are made of flexible materials such as silicone rather than stiff materials such as metals. One such soft robotic actuator is the fiber-reinforced actuator (FRA). Fabricated utilizing a combination of silicone bladder(s) and inextensible materials, these actuators are able to perform one of various motions through changes of pressure [1]. Supernumerary limbs (3rd arms), in contrast, are extra robotic limbs that can function cooperatively or independently of the user’s own limbs. These differ from exoskeletal robotics, as they are not fixated to the user’s limb to augment strength, but rather are placed elsewhere on the body to assist in tasks that would otherwise require multiple people. Examples of such devices include MIT/Boeing’s supernumerary arms to assist in the assembly of aircraft fuselage [2] or the supernumerary hand Softhand [3]. Combining these two concepts, an articulate SR3A was created (Fig. 1). By replacing traditional actuators with soft actuators, the limb is not only lighter, but it also better replicates the equivalent human limb. In addition to these benefits, the SR3A would also need to be less expensive to fabricate and actuate than an arm using rigid body components. This paper presents the design of a proof-of-concept prototype of a SR3A utilizing soft robotic actuators that could be used to assist individuals with hand impairments perform ADLs.

Caregivers’ practices according to ADLs: Evidence from Facebook support groups for Alzheimer and dementia care (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavel Bachmann ◽  
Jan Hruška
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Family Caregivers ◽  
Support Groups ◽  
Caregiver Burden ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽  
Feeding Activity ◽  
Real Life ◽  
The Individual

BACKGROUND As the social media (SM) support groups provide a communication platform for caregivers to share experiences, examples of effective and ineffective care, asking questions, recommending new approaches, or venting their needs, there is still little documented on how SM can help to obtain a true picture of the caregiver burden according to activities of daily living (ADLs). OBJECTIVE The study aims to identify the real-life practice of family caregivers looking after people with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The image of caregivers’ actual practice is determined on the basis of their experience, needs, emotions, or examples of the behavior of people with AD found on social networks. METHODS We collected a sample of 1603 posts relevant to basic activities of daily living (ADLs) which were published in two Facebook support groups related to AD. In the next step, conversation topics were identified separately for each of the six basic categories of ADLs. This was done using the topic extractor based on the simple parallel threaded implementation of Latent Dirichlet allocation with sparse LDA sampling scheme and data structure. RESULTS From the quantitative point, the study provides knowledge about the proportions of members’ interest in the individual areas of ADLs. From the qualitative point, machine learning automatically detected five discussion topics for each activity. At the same time, for each of the topics, real-life examples from the day-to-day experience of family caregivers are given. In terms of the members’ interests, statistically significant differences were found between the drinking and feeding activity and three other daily activities. Moreover, a qualitative analysis showed several causal links between the individual topics discussed within the areas of ADLs. CONCLUSIONS The acquired knowledge can help further research focus on the most problematic areas relevant for people with AD in order to increase their quality of life and at the same time reduce the caregiver burden. The study expands the knowledge of the demands posed by the individual caregiver activities, specifically in the context of activity-based costing or time-based activity costing. At the same time, it can serve as a basis for identifying the needs of caregivers in the field of innovative development or the implementation of online counseling on social networks. CLINICALTRIAL Not applicable.

UWB Indoor Location for Monitoring Dementia Patients

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 45-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnes Grünerbl ◽  
Gernot Bahle ◽  
Friedrich Hanser ◽  
Paul Lukowicz
Keyword(s):  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Automatic Monitoring ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Sensor Deployment ◽  
Indoor Location ◽  
Dementia Patients ◽  
Activity Information

Monitoring the activities of daily living is a common form of assessing the progression of dementia. Yet so far, this mostly can only be done by visual observations, which is time and cost expensive and therefore only done on a short scale. Even though the technology for automatic monitoring exists, it is still seldom used in real life environments. Key problems are the effort involved in sensor deployment and the extraction of relevant activity information from simple sensor data. In the following article the authors describe a long-term real-life monitoring of dementia patients using an easy to deploy UWB-location system. The authors describe the system-concept, discuss practical deployment and maintenance experience, and present monitoring results.

Development and comprehensive evaluation of a new spring-steel-driven glove for grasping assistance during activities of daily living

2021 ◽  
pp. 095441192110399
Author(s):  
Daniel Chizhik ◽  
Babak Hejrati
Keyword(s):  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Muscle Activity ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Comprehensive Evaluation ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Hand Function ◽  
Spring Steel ◽  
Steel Strips ◽  
Grasping Forces ◽  
Increasing Demand

Millions of people suffer from a decline in grip strength and hand function due to conditions such as chronic disease, injuries, and aging. Hand function decline results in difficulties with performing activities of daily living, where grasping, lifting, and releasing objects are essential. There is an increasing demand for assistive gloves to enhance users’ hand function and improve their independence. This paper presents the design of a new bidirectional lightweight assistive glove and demonstrates its capabilities through comprehensive experiments using human subjects. The developed glove can provide adequate power augmentation for grasping and releasing objects due to its simple yet effective design using spring steel strips and linear actuators. The glove directly transfers assistive forces to users’ fingertips without any complex intermediate mechanism, and its low weight of 196 g promotes its usability. The rigorous experiment design provided a thorough assessment of the developed glove by accounting for both parameters of size and weight of objects and by including subjects with different hand sizes. To quantify the glove’s performance, the subjects’ muscle activity, their finger and thumb joints’ trajectories, and their grasping forces while using the glove were investigated. The glove could generate the necessary grasping forces to assist with lifting common-household objects. The subjects’ muscle activity significantly decreased when using the glove for object manipulation. The trajectories of the index finger and thumb joints when using the glove were dependent on the size of objects similar to natural unassisted grasping. The obtained results demonstrate the glove’s ability for grip power augmentation of individuals with declining hand strength.

scholarly journals A calibrated database of kinematics and EMG of the forearm and hand during activities of daily living

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Néstor J. Jarque-Bou ◽  
Margarita Vergara ◽  
Joaquín L. Sancho-Bru ◽  
Verónica Gracia-Ibáñez ◽  
Alba Roda-Sales
Keyword(s):  
Activities Of Daily Living ◽  
Muscle Activity ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Calibration Procedure ◽  
Surface Emg ◽  
Emg Activity ◽  
Hand Kinematics ◽  
Instrumented Glove ◽  
Forearm Muscle

Abstract Linking hand kinematics and forearm muscle activity is a challenging and crucial problem for several domains, such as prosthetics, 3D modelling or rehabilitation. To advance in this relationship between hand kinematics and muscle activity, synchronised and well-defined data are needed. However, currently available datasets are scarce, and the presented tasks and data are often limited. This paper presents the KIN-MUS UJI Dataset that contains 572 recordings with anatomical angles and forearm muscle activity of 22 subjects while performing 26 representative activities of daily living. This dataset is, to our knowledge, the biggest currently available hand kinematics and muscle activity dataset to focus on goal-oriented actions. Data were recorded using a CyberGlove instrumented glove and surface EMG electrodes, both properly synchronised. Eighteen hand anatomical angles were obtained from the glove sensors by a validated calibration procedure. Surface EMG activity was recorded from seven representative forearm areas. The statistics verified that data were not affected by the experimental procedures and were similar to the data acquired under real-life conditions.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document