TY - JOUR
T1 - The Softhand Pro
T2 - Functional evaluation of a novel, flexible, and robust myoelectric prosthesis
AU - Godfrey, Sasha Blue
AU - Zhao, Kristin D.
AU - Theuer, Amanda
AU - Catalano, Manuel G.
AU - Bianchi, Matteo
AU - Breighner, Ryan
AU - Bhaskaran, Divya
AU - Lennon, Ryan
AU - Grioli, Giorgio
AU - Santello, Marco
AU - Bicchi, Antonio
AU - Andrews, Karen
N1 - Funding Information:
Research reported in this publication was supported by The Grainger Foundation, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute Of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under Award Number R21HD081938, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No.688857 (SoftPro). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH, the European Commission, or their services.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Godfrey et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2018/10/1
Y1 - 2018/10/1
N2 - Roughly one quarter of active upper limb prosthetic technology is rejected by the user, and user surveys have identified key areas requiring improvement: function, comfort, cost, durability, and appearance. Here we present the first systematic, clinical assessment of a novel prosthetic hand, the SoftHand Pro (SHP), in participants with transradial amputation and age-matched, limb-intact participants. The SHP is a robust and functional prosthetic hand that minimizes cost and weight using an underactuated design with a single motor. Participants with limb loss were evaluated on functional clinical measures before and after a 6–8 hour training period with the SHP as well as with their own prosthesis; limb-intact participants were tested only before and after SHP training. Participants with limb loss also evaluated their own prosthesis and the SHP (following training) using subjective questionnaires. Both objective and subjective results were positive and illuminated the strengths and weaknesses of the SHP. In particular, results pre-training show the SHP is easy to use, and significant improvement in the Activities Measure for Upper Limb Amputees in both groups following a 6–8 hour training highlights the ease of learning the unique features of the SHP (median improvement: 4.71 and 3.26 and p = 0.009 and 0.036 for limb loss and limb-intact groups, respectively). Further, we found no difference in performance compared to participant’s own commercial devices in several clinical measures and found performance surpassing these devices on two functional tasks, buttoning a shirt and using a cell phone, suggesting a functional prosthetic design. Finally, improvements are needed in the SHP design and/or training in light of poor results in small object manipulation. Taken together, these results show the promise of the SHP, a flexible and adaptive prosthetic hand, and pave a path forward to ensuring higher functionality in future.
AB - Roughly one quarter of active upper limb prosthetic technology is rejected by the user, and user surveys have identified key areas requiring improvement: function, comfort, cost, durability, and appearance. Here we present the first systematic, clinical assessment of a novel prosthetic hand, the SoftHand Pro (SHP), in participants with transradial amputation and age-matched, limb-intact participants. The SHP is a robust and functional prosthetic hand that minimizes cost and weight using an underactuated design with a single motor. Participants with limb loss were evaluated on functional clinical measures before and after a 6–8 hour training period with the SHP as well as with their own prosthesis; limb-intact participants were tested only before and after SHP training. Participants with limb loss also evaluated their own prosthesis and the SHP (following training) using subjective questionnaires. Both objective and subjective results were positive and illuminated the strengths and weaknesses of the SHP. In particular, results pre-training show the SHP is easy to use, and significant improvement in the Activities Measure for Upper Limb Amputees in both groups following a 6–8 hour training highlights the ease of learning the unique features of the SHP (median improvement: 4.71 and 3.26 and p = 0.009 and 0.036 for limb loss and limb-intact groups, respectively). Further, we found no difference in performance compared to participant’s own commercial devices in several clinical measures and found performance surpassing these devices on two functional tasks, buttoning a shirt and using a cell phone, suggesting a functional prosthetic design. Finally, improvements are needed in the SHP design and/or training in light of poor results in small object manipulation. Taken together, these results show the promise of the SHP, a flexible and adaptive prosthetic hand, and pave a path forward to ensuring higher functionality in future.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0205653
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0205653
M3 - Article
C2 - 30321204
AN - SCOPUS:85055072857
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 13
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
IS - 10
M1 - e0205653
ER -