Functional assessment of control systems for cybernetic elbow prostheses--Part I: Description of the technique.

This paper (Part I of II) presents a novel control scheme with which an amputee commands an elbow prosthesis using myoelectric activity. By mimicking some important characteristics of the intact neuromuscular system, the proposed controller attempts to make the prosthesis respond as the natural elbow to both voluntary commands from the amputee and applied moments from the environment. Also presented is the description of a novel experiment for functionally assessing elbow prosthesis controllers. The experimental design calls for an amputee to perform a constrained motion task while operating a prosthesis capable of implementing a wide variety of controllers. Due to the nature of the constraint, the task emphasizes the prosthesis response to both inputs: voluntary commands and external moments. Application of the experiment to assessment of the proposed control scheme and the control scheme used in a state-of-the-art prosthesis is presented in Part II.