Keven Walgamott had a good “feeling” about picking up the egg without crushing it. What seems simple for nearly everyone else can be more of a Herculean task for Walgamott, who lost his left hand and part of his arm in an electrical accident 17 years ago. But he was testing out the prototype of LUKE, a high-tech prosthetic arm with fingers that not only can move, they can move with his thoughts. And thanks to a biomedical engineering team at the University of Utah, he “felt” the egg well enough so his brain could tell the prosthetic hand not to squeeze too hard.
That’s because the team, led by犹他大学生物医学工程副教授格雷戈里·克拉克（Gregory Clark）为“卢克武器”（Luke Arm）开发了一种方式（以卢克·天行者（Luke Skywalker）进入的机器人手命名帝国Strikes Back）模仿人手通过向大脑发送适当的信号来感受对象的方式。
这ir findings were published in a new paper co-authored by University of Utah biomedical engineering doctoral student Jacob George, former doctoral student David Kluger, Clark, and other colleagues在最新版本中期刊Science Robotics。
Sending the right messages
“We changed the way we are sending that information to the brain so that it matches the human body. And by matching the human body, we were able to see improved benefits,” George says. “We’re making more biologically realistic signals.”
这意味着截肢者穿着prostheticarm can sense the touch of something soft or hard, understand better how to pick it up, and perform delicate tasks that would otherwise be impossible with a standard prosthetic with metal hooks or claws for hands.
沃尔加莫特在2017年的临床测试中首次使用卢克臂说：“这几乎使我流泪了。”我从没想过我会再次感觉到那只手。”
Walgamott, a real estate agent from West Valley City, Utah, and one of seven test subjects at the University of Utah, was able to pluck grapes without crushing them, pick up an egg without cracking it, and hold his wife’s hand with a sensation in the fingers similar to that of an able-bodied person.
“One of the first things he wanted to do was put on his wedding ring. That’s hard to do with one hand,” says Clark. “It was very moving.”
How those things are accomplished is through a complex series of mathematical calculations and modeling.
凯文。沃尔加莫特（Walgamott）戴着卢克（Luke）假肢。学分：犹他大学神经界面中心
这LUKE Arm
卢克臂已经开发了大约15年。手臂本身是由金属电动机和零件制成的，手上有透明的硅“皮肤”。它由外部电池提供动力，并连接到计算机。它是由DEKA研究与发展公司是一家位于新罕布什尔州的公司，由Segway Inventor Dean Kamen创立。
Meanwhile, the University of Utah team has been developing a system that allows the prosthetic arm to tap into the wearer’s nerves, which are like biological wires that send signals to the arm to move. It does that thanks to an invention by University of Utah biomedical engineering Emeritus Distinguished Professor Richard A. Normann called the Utah Slanted Electrode Array.
阵列是一包100个微电极和电线，这些微电极和电线被植入前臂的截肢者神经并连接到体外的计算机。阵列解释了仍在存放的手臂神经中的信号，计算机将它们转换为告诉手臂移动的数字信号。
但这也可以用另一种方式起作用。要执行诸如拾取对象之类的任务，不仅需要大脑告诉手移动。假肢还必须学习如何“感觉到”对象，以便知道要施加多少压力，因为您无法仅通过查看它来弄清楚这一点。
First, the prosthetic arm has sensors in its hand that send signals to the nerves via the Array to mimic the feeling the hand gets upon grabbing something. But equally important is how those signals are sent. It involves understanding how your brain deals with transitions in information when it first touches something. Upon first contact of an object, a burst of impulses runs up the nerves to the brain and then tapers off. Recreating this was a big step.
“Just providing sensation is a big deal, but the way you send that information is also critically important, and if you make it more biologically realistic, the brain will understand it better and the performance of this sensation will also be better,” says Clark.
为了实现这一目标，克拉克的团队使用了数学计算以及灵长类动物手臂的记录冲动，以创建一个近似模型，以了解人类如何接受这些不同的信号模式。然后将该模型实施到卢克ARM系统中。
Future research
除了创建卢克臂的原型触碰，the overall team is already developing a version that is completely portable and does not need to be wired to a computer outside the body. Instead, everything would be connected wirelessly, giving the佩戴者complete freedom.
Clark says the Utah Slanted Electrode Array is also capable of sending signals to the brain for more than just thesense of touch，，，，such as pain and temperature, though the paper primarily addresses touch. And while their work currently has only involved amputees who lost their extremities below the elbow, where the muscles to move the hand are located, Clark says their research could also be applied to those who lost their arms above the elbow.
克拉克（Clark）希望在2020年或2021年，三个测试对象能够将手臂带回家，以待在联邦监管机构批准。
这研究involves a number of institutions including the University of Utah’s Department of Neurosurgery, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Department of Orthopedics, the University of Chicago’s Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, the Cleveland Clinic’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Utah neurotechnology companies Ripple Neuro LLC and Blackrock Microsystems. The project is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation.
“This is an incredible interdisciplinary effort,” says Clark. “We could not have done this without the substantial efforts of everybody on that team.”
编者注：Reposted from the University of Utah.
Filed Under:Aerospace + defense，，，，学生课程，，，，这Robot Report
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