義手指先力覚の提示による電動義手での豆腐把持の実現

抄録

Our objective is to develop soft pressure sensors to control the electric arm prosthesis by measuring the movement of muscles for the control signals instead of EMG. In our previous research, we installed soft pressure sensors in the fingertips of the prosthetic hand for the soft object grasping function. As a result, it had become possible to stably grip without crushing those soft objects such as silken tofu in the prosthetic hand. In this study, we try to develope operability of electric arm. In the previous method, gripping power was controlled by computer automatically. This method, however, could not give the feeling of the gripping force to the user. Therefore, we developed a gripping force teaching mechanism to the user. Furthermore, we investigated the relationship between the force presented by the teaching mechanism and the fingertip sensor value when grasping the soft object by the electric arm in order to give the appropriate feeling for the user to control the grasping force. By using the gripping force teaching mechanism, the user was finally able to control the grasping force and the tester succeeded to pick up a piece of silken tofu by prosthetic hand.