• assistive
• haptic
• human-robot
• proprioceptive
• robotics

Every year, in Italy, there are about 3.600 amputations of upper limb, and 80% of them refer to the hand. For prosthesis users is important to know the position of their prosthesis during the usage, especially during grasping. This is commonly achieved through visual control, which results in a significant cognitive burden for amputees. The purpose of this thesis is the design, development and testing of a portable and wearable device Stretch-Pro, which can provide proprioceptive information on artificial hand aperture through skin stretch stimulation.
Motivation for this work is to develop a small sized device, which can be easily integrated within the socket, and convey intuitive proprioceptive cues. Stretch-Pro is intended to be used in conjunction with the SoftHand Pro, a myo-electrically controlled under-actuated prosthetic hand. A second version of the Stretch-Pro with two motors which allows for a greater skin displacement w.r.t the Stretch-Pro device with only one motor. Furthermore, an additional type of stimulation, pinch-stretch like, can be also implemented. Characterization and experiments are reported. Results show that thanks to the feedback provided by Stretch-Pro, subjects could successfully recognize the size of the objects and the feedback was evaluated as intuitive, comfortable and effective.