An evolvable hardware chip for prosthetic hand controller

Abstract

This paper describes an Evolvable Hardware (EHW) chip, and the application of this chip as a controller for a myoelectric prosthetic hand. The chip consists of Genetic Algorithm (GA) hardware, reconfigurable hardware logic, a chromosome memory, a training data memory, and a 16-bit CPU core (NEC V30). This paper also briefly introduces other EHW chips being developed as part of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry's (MITI) Real World Computing Project (RWCP), which include an analogue EHW chip for cellular phones, a neural network EHW chip capable of autonomous reconfiguration, and a data compression EHW chip for electrophotographic printers.