The Rice Haptic Rocker includes a rotating arm brushing a soft rubber pad over the skin of the arm. The more a prosthetic hand closes, the more the pad stretches the skin. {Image courtesy of Brandon Martin/Rice University]
Tactile feedback enabled blindfolded test subjects to more than double their ability to determine the size of objects they grasped with a prosthetic hand, according to U.S. and Italian engineers.
“Humans have an innate sense of how the parts of their bodies are positioned, even if they can’t see them,” said Marcia O’Malley, professor of mechanical engineering at Rice University, in a university news release. “This ‘muscle sense’ is what allows people to type on a keyboard, hold a cup, throw a ball, use a brake pedal and do countless other daily tasks.”
The researchers – from Rice University and the Research Center “E.Piaggio” of the University of Pisa and the Italian Institute of Technology – will present their findings June 7 at the World Haptics 2017 conference in Fürstenfeldbruck, Germany.
Get the full story on our sister site, Medical Design & Outsourcing.
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