Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2023
27th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Development of an Instrumented Object to be used in a new Upper Limb Prosthesis Training Protocol
Submission Author:
Pedro de Figueiredo Abissamra , SP , Brazil
Co-Authors:
Pedro de Figueiredo Abissamra, Jean Mendes Nascimento, Ana Carolina Rodrigues da Silva, Paulo Marcos AGUIAR
Presenter: Pedro de Figueiredo Abissamra
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2023.COB2023-1919
Abstract
The impairment of grasping ability is very frequent in new prosthesis users. It is known that more than half of them remain with significant difficulties to control the prosthesis during prehension tasks, which often leads to discontinuation of use. In the last years a point that has been pushed aside is the training strategy. Usually, the patients are trained with the prosthesis by grasping and releasing some objects. Both the patient and the therapist do not have any other feedback information except the vision. One of the most popular clinically validated hand function tests is the Southampton Hand Assessment Procedure (SHAP), it is a measurement of the functionality of normal, impaired, and prosthetic hands, that provides a comprehensive overview of the functionality of prehensile grips and a general functionality score. SHAP scores are calculated based on the execution times of its tasks by unilateral hand function and it is visually measured, moreover each task is timed by the participant (patient). To aid the patients to have a better life with their prosthesis it is necessary to start at the beginning, developing a new upper limb prosthesis training protocol, based on information that can be measured and registered by an automatic device. Therefore, it is essential to have some information like the prosthesis orientation, the points of grasping, and the applied force on the object. To get this data an instrumented device called “Intelligent Object”, IO was developed. The IO prototype was printed in Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) using a Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) printer, inner it there are a 5-kilogram load cell and a 6 degrees of freedom Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). The object shape and its contour were defined based on the prostheses in use and the human hand. This intelligent object comes to bridge the gap between functional scores training and measurable function training, leading to reliable therapy results. This paper presents the Intelligent Object development, its tests and the preliminary results that looks promising.
Keywords
Instrumented Object, Upper limb prostheses, development, Training Protocol
