Live demonstration: Targeted transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation for phantom limb sensory feedback

Abstract

This is a live demonstration of the work described in [1] and [2] (paper ID 7153). The goal of this work is to use a neuromorphic model for providing tactile feedback to a prosthetic hand and user to improve grasping functionality. Custom force sensors are placed on the fingertips of a bebionc3 (Steeper, Leeds, UK) prosthetic hand and communicate with the prosthesis controller (Infinite Biomedical Technologies, Baltimore, USA). The prosthesis grip force is used as the input to a leaky integrate and fire (LIF) with spike rate adaption neuron model to produce a tactile signal represented by spiking information, which is similar to the behavior of mechanoreceptors found in humans. The prosthesis controller produces spiking information to capture the tactile signal during a grasping task. The neuromorphic tactile signal can then be used as grip force modulation [1] or for closed-loop sensory feedback as discussed in [2].