Imperial leads project to give natural sensations to prosthetic limbs

Researchers at Imperial College London have been awarded a €10m European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant to work with partners in delivering natural sensations to prosthetic limbs.

The grant was awarded to an international group, led by Imperial College London’s Professor Dario Farina, that will develop prosthetic arms and legs that can sense the environment and deliver sensations to patients.

Prof Farina, of Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering, said: “We have partly worked out how to let the brain command a prosthetic limb. Now, we want to reach fully natural control and to have the limbs talk back to the brain via natural sensations.”

In 2017, Prof Farina’s research group developed an arm that patients could move at will, by using a sensor to pick up movement from muscles in a stump and convert them into commands for the arm.

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/sensor-technology-extends-range-of-movement-for-prosthetic-arms/

The researchers will now work with a selection of patients to develop a novel breakthrough idea for controlling and feeling robotic limbs.