There are already a lot of experimental prosthetic arms that present customers with the tactile sensation of touching an object. The MiniTouch system takes issues additional, because it permits customers to sense the temperature of things that they are touching.
Developed by scientists from Italy’s Sant’Anna Faculty of Superior Research and Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL), MiniTouch will be integrated into current third-party prostheses.
The setup incorporates a temperature sensor that covers the prosthetic hand’s index finger pad, together with a thermode positioned within the socket that connects the prosthesis to the residual arm stump. A thermode is a small gadget that heats up or cools down on command.
Because the finger sensor presses in opposition to the floor of an object, it produces distinctive electrical indicators based mostly on the temperature of that floor. These indicators are relayed to the hard-wired thermode, which responds by heating or cooling the pores and skin in a selected space of the arm stump.
As a result of the person’s mind sees the finger touching the item on the similar time that the adjustments in temperature are picked up by the nerves within the stump, it produces a way of warmth or coldness that’s perceived as originating in the tip of that finger. It is not in contrast to the phenomenon by which latest amputees could really feel sensations in a “phantom limb.”
MiniTouch has already been efficiently examined on a 57-year-old man whose hand had been amputated on the wrist. Using the brand new system, he was capable of differentiate between visually similar bottles that contained chilly, cool and sizzling water, with 100% accuracy – with out MiniTouch, his accuracy fell to simply 33%.
He was additionally capable of kind metallic cubes based mostly on their differing temperatures, plus he was 80% correct at differentiating between human and prosthetic arms when touching them whereas blindfolded.
Sant’Anna Faculty of Superior Research
“Temperature is without doubt one of the final frontiers to restoring sensation to robotic arms. For the primary time, we’re actually near restoring the total palette of sensations to amputees,” mentioned Sant’Anna’s Prof. Silvestro Micera, who led the analysis together with EPFL’s Dr. Solaiman Shokur. “This research paves the best way for extra pure hand prostheses that restore a full vary of sensations, providing amputees a richer and extra pure notion of the tactile world.”
A paper on the MiniTouch system was lately revealed within the journal Med.