Weitere Informationen:
- Scientific Video of the concept
- Arm Prothesis Race at Cybathlon 2024
- Cybathlon Team Page of CyberTUM
- Paper "OPENGRASP-LITE Version 1.0: A Tactile Artificial Hand with a Compliant Linkage Mechanism".
Text: Andreas Schmitz
NEWS, Community, Education, Health, Research, Robotics |
Stacking cups into a pyramid, balancing a pan of balls and unscrewing jam jars: these are just three of the ten tasks that participants in the Arm Prosthesis Race have to master as part of the Cybathlon 2024. Four years ago, the pilot of the CyberTUM team competed in the arm prosthesis race at the Cybathlon in Zurich with a gripper. Now the prosthesis looks like a real hand. It is controlled by signals from the muscles in the forearm.
CyberTUM is one of three TUM teams at the Cybathlon 2024
At the Cybathlon organised by ETH Zurich, international teams of students compete against each other to develop assistive technologies for people who are restricted in their movement. This year, eight disciplines are planned, including the Brain-Computer Interface Race (including the TUM team NeuroTUM), the Assistant Robot Race (including the DLR-TUM team EDAN) and the Arm Prosthesis Race, in which the MIRMI team is taking part. A total of 84 teams will be competing.
New development of the artificial hand in four years
The technology used by the MIRMI team is complex. The phalanges and the hand were produced in-house, mainly using 3D printing. The fingertips are made of silicone with embedded tactile sensors. On the one hand, this makes the fingers sensitive because they can perceive the forces in the environment. On the other hand, they adapt better to different surfaces, which is an advantage for the tasks at hand. To enable the hand to grip in the way required for the tasks, the students have implemented several grip patterns. To control them, certain muscles on the forearm must now be activated Four sensors, two on the underside of the forearm and two on the upper side, measure muscle activity. And depending on which muscles are tensed, this causes the artificial hand to grip as desired. It is important that the user teaches the artificial hand this (via neural networks).
‘Cybathlon Challenge’ course focuses on mechatronics
In order to transform this mix of mechanical design, electronic control, feeling fingers and machine learning into a viable overall concept, students have been meeting for four hours a week in the ‘Cybathlon Challenge’ course every semester since the 2020/2021 winter semester. ‘We are less of a racing team and more of a university course,’ explains Christopher Herneth, ‘our aim is to teach complex mechatronics within a course’. The student from the very beginning of the artificial hand project has remained involved in the project to the extent that he now leads the course as a doctoral student together with doctoral student Sonja Groß. The students have now been working on the technology for almost four years in alternating teams. The time has come at the end of October And pilot Adnan Jukic, who has been wearing a prosthetic arm since childhood, starts the ten-task course.
Weitere Informationen:
Text: Andreas Schmitz