Sensory Feedback in Prosthetic Arms

Abstract: The sense of touch in our body is something that many of us take for granted. It is after all hard to imagine how we would move and utilize our arms and legs without any sensory feedback. For people who need to use hand prosthetics it is however very clear how they could improve their quality of life if they could “feel” with their hands once again. This could be realized using an artificial sense of touch, a sensory feedback system. There are different ways to accomplish the above. A simple solution would be to pair force sensors on the hand prosthesis with a device which provides mechanical feedback to the user. Such an approach is investigated in this report. The initial step was to build a prototype device which would allow for controlling a DC motor with force input from the user. This system was then used as a test bench to compare results from using two different sensor types, the FSR and SingleTact sensors. With the main findings from this report it can be concluded that a feedback system using both sensor types can work. While the error was reduced to some extent using PI control, further work will be necessary until the system can be used in practice.