Development of an Active Shoulder Prosthesis with Low-Level Control Validation

Proper functioning of the shoulder complex is imperative for upper limb motion. Therefore, amputees who undergo shoulder disarticulation or forequarter amputation require a prosthetic device which can replicate the functionalities of a human shoulder, in order to regain their upper limb motions. Different prosthetic devices are proposed for shoulder level amputees to assist motions of the shoulder complex. This paper proposed an externally powered prosthetic device for shoulder amputees. The shoulder prosthesis can perform shoulder flexion/extension, shoulder abduction/adduction, and shoulder internal/external rotation. Experiments are carried out with a low–level control method to validate the motion generation of the proposed prosthesis.