Release date: 2016-11-10
A new control system that recognizes subtle nerve signals, allowing prosthetic users to move more gracefully and naturally.
In 1985, the 16-year-old Jodie O'Connell-Ponkos was taken away by the industrial meat grinder. She had used a prosthetic arm for five years until one day she threw it in frustration. She said, "Hate can only be an understatement." These devices are too bad to use. Up to now, she has not used new prostheses for 20 years.
O'Connell-Ponkos experience is very common among upper extremity amputees. Despite significant advances in engineering and usability, up to 75% of users have abandoned the use of electric prostheses (as of 2007), which has not changed significantly over the course of more than 20 years of development.
Despite the better materials, the more powerful motor, and the addition of more joints, the upper limb prosthesis still uses the control system developed in the 1950s. The control system also includes a body power supply system and an electromyography system consisting of bulky cables and straps. The myoelectric system detects muscle activity using an electronic sensor placed in the skin of the amputation site, and then sends the activity information to the motor to operate the motor. For example, in order to contract the biceps, the artificial elbow joint needs to be bent first, but this is not in line with human intuition. After a large amount of training, the patient can skillfully use the prosthesis.
[Illustration] Image source: Matthew Stout/Sikich
Last year, O'Connell-Ponkos tried a new piece of equipment from Coapt that included a new control system that recognizes tiny nerve signals. Unlike the prosthetic at the time, the new arm allowed her to move more gracefully and naturally. Today, this lively and outgoing trainer is always wearing her prosthesis to help her complete everything from chopping wood to combing ponytails.
In 2016, at the American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association conference in Boston, Coapt had only a very small booth behind the exhibition hall. There, O'Connell-Ponkos (who has been hired as a Coapt spokesperson) is marketing their technology, she said, and the technology is already compatible with the products of the five well-known prosthetic manufacturers.
Blair Lock, co-founder and CEO of Coapt, said that they entered the market by the end of 2013 and that an estimated 200 people are using the system. The system is wrapped in a small black box consisting of a circuit board and a set of algorithms that use pattern recognition technology to decode electrical signals transmitted from the arm muscles. Now, it has become a bridge between connecting user intent and prosthetic action.
Lock said that if nerve activity is detected separately, it will appear very "quiet", but because it contains a lot of information, it will be like "symphony" and needs to be carefully distinguished. The muscles, like the speakers, magnify the nerves. Traditional electromyography can only detect the volume of music, but pattern recognition software can link a specific brain signal (like a unique song) to an action.
The company plans to release a new, smaller product in the near future. Not only that, they got a new technology license from Purdue University that can read electrical signals directly from the skin (using implanted electrodes). However, Lock is tight-lipped about the development of this technology, he wants to wait until the right time to announce to everyone.
Coapt is not alone on the road to changing the upper limb prosthetic control, and two leading prosthetic manufacturing companies are working to improve the prosthetic control system. Johns Hopkins Modular Prosthetic Upper Limbs (MPL) can also be operated using pattern recognition software, and DEKA Research uses the LUKE Arm named after Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. The Coapt system. Both MPL and LUKE Arm are funded by DARPA. Both products are not yet available for sale, but LUKE Arm is scheduled to be launched by the end of this year.
Johns Hopkins' MPL pattern recognition system was developed in-house, and Mike McLaughlin, chief engineer of the research and development department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the creator of MPL, said, "Our idea is to Consciousness translates directly into action."
The LUKE Arm can be controlled in a variety of ways, including the Coapt system, said Tom Doyon, a member of the LUKE Arm development team at DEKA Research. Another feature of the LUKE Arm is the ability to use wireless foot control, which is like moving the arm in a predetermined pattern using a joystick.
However, although the above prosthesis has been very convenient, it still cannot be used like a real hand. Even the best control system performs only a series of pre-set actions and cannot be controlled as desired. In the case of the Adapt system, the user can pre-set about six to eight actions, such as sticking out fingers, pinching or punching for everyday use.
Now, the factor limiting the development of prosthetics is not the design and manufacturing techniques of the arm (in the case of MPL, which consists of 26 joints and hundreds of sensors), but rather the bandwidth of the brain signal. "When moving the arm, there may be 500 million neurons involved, but now we can only observe a few hundred neurons at most," McLaughlin said. "These things are all in our brains, but we observe them." The ability is limited."
Future prosthetic control technology hopes to directly detect the brain's "symphony" by implanting electrodes under the skin or even in the brain. Recently, the Johns Hopkins MPL team worked with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh to perform brain electrode implantation in two patients with severe spinal cord injury. Ideally, I hope that the technology will become non-invasive surgery one day, McLaughlin said. "But we have not achieved this effect. Please give us another year or so."
Source: Global Science
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