Intuitive prosthetic control using upper limb inter-joint coordinations and IMU-based shoulder angles measurement: A pilot study

Abstract

Commercialized upper limb prostheses do not match the expectations of amputated people, especially transhumeral amputees. Most of them report a lack of functionality, mostly explained by a counter-intuitive control strategy. This paper presents the first implementation of an automatic prosthesis control approach based on natural coordinations between upper limb joints and IMU-based humeral orientation measurement. Two healthy individuals were able to use the prosthetic forearm attached to their upper arm to point at targets in a 3D workspace with a reasonable error. The results demonstrate the potential applications of automatizing the motion of some joints along the upper limb, in the same way as human upper limbs are controlled.