Development of Wearable Intention Detection Systems for Predicting Hand Motion using Non-Contact Sensors

The role of intention detection systems in robotic orthotic and prosthetic hands is, to measure and predict hand motion using indirect sensor measurements as part of the human machine interface. A novel contactless sensing approach to wearable intention detection systems for predicting hand motion was developed in this work. The proposed system was designed to be usable by children as young as 4 years old. System performance was validated by predicting 9 degree of freedom hand movement using regression at 25 Hz with average error less than 7.5 degrees over multiple users, highlighting the performance potential of the novel approach.