2012 Volume 30 Issue 6 Pages 621-628
This paper proposes a virtual prosthetic hand (VH) and a virtual training system for controlling of electromyogram (EMG) prosthetic hands in virtual reality environment. The VH has human skin-like texture with 22 joints, and can realize a wide variety of human hand movements controlling each joint angle. Trainees can control it by using EMG signals and 3D position and posture measured from his or her forearm, and can perform training such as holding and moving virtual objects by controlling the VH voluntarily. In this paper, virtual box and block test (BBT) was developed as an example for operation training of the prosthetic hand. Experiments were conducted on five healthy subjects for five days. Manipulation ability of subjects were evaluated using seven indices calculated from the measured EMG signals and 3D position and posture during performing the virtual BBTs. Comparing the evaluated indices of the first and last days, four out of the seven indices show a significant difference at the 0.1% level, and one out of the seven at the 1% level. The results lead us to conclude that the proposed system could be used for operation training of EMG prosthetic hands.
