Location
Building M, Ground Floor, Room M.003α
Phone
+(30) 210-772-2348
Equipment
Upper-limb prosthetic technology has significantly changed in recent years. The devices available and those under development, have progressed the state of the art considerably. Most are based on velocity control and fail to activate the proprioception of the amputee, as they do not provide their user with adequate feedback. The Extended Physiological Proprioception (EPP) is an upper-limb prosthesis proven to be functionally superior to velocity control configurations. However, this control configuration has the disadvantage that it is not aesthetic for the human user, it is subject to control constraints related to the direction of the movement, and finally, a post-amputation plastic surgery is required. These drawbacks led to the gradual abandonment of EPP.
A novel control configuration called “Biomechatronic EPP” has been developed to overcome these shortcomings, which is based on EPP. Based on the master/slave architecture from the field of Telerobotics/Teleoperation, a new EPP-equivalent architecture is proposed. This new control configuration, coined “Biomechatronic EPP”, eliminates the drawbacks of EPP.
According to the envisioned control configuration, low- power devices are to be implanted and connected to specific pair of agonist-antagonist muscles during or after the initial amputation surgery. Forces from the muscles of interest are exerted directly to the implants which play the role of the master robots of the teleoperation scheme. These forces are measured and used as input for the prosthesis, which is the slave robot of the system. The force measurements are wirelessly transmitted, while the controller of the control configuration achieves the dynamic coupling between the implanted motors and the prosthesis, providing this way the desired proprioceptive feedback to the amputee.
Photos
Selected Publications
For complete publications list see here
• Mablekos-Alexiou, A., Kontogiannopoulos, S., Bertos, G.A., Papadopoulos, E., “Biomechatronics-based EPP Topology for Upper-Limb Prosthesis Control: Modeling & Benchtop Prototype,” Biomedical Signal Processing and Control, Volume 73, March 2022, 103454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2021.103454.
• Kontogiannopoulos, S., Bertos, G., and Papadopoulos, E., “A “Biomechatronic EPP” Upper-Limb Prosthesis Control Configuration and its performance comparison to other control configurations,” IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics, accepted Feb. 2020.
• Bertos, G. and Papadopoulos, E., “Upper-Limb Prosthetic Devices,” Chapter 6 in Handbook of Biomechatronics, Academic Press, Elsevier, London, UK, 2019.
• Bertos, G. and Papadopoulos, E., “Lower-Limb Prosthetics,” Chapter 7 in Handbook of Biomechatronics, Academic Press, Elsevier, London, UK, 2019.
• Bertos, G., Koukoulas, N., Papadopoulos, E., Mablekos-Alexiou, A., “A Biomechatronic EPP upper-limb prosthesis teleoperation system implementation using Bluetooth Low Energy,” 40th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC’18), Honolulu, HI, USA, July 17-21, 2018.
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