An overview and comparison of upper limb prosthetics

Abstract

This paper looks at various existing upper limb prostheses both from the commercial and research area. It assesses what has been achieved in the commercial field as well as its shortcomings. State-of-the-art research on upper limb prosthetics is reviewed and the progress over the last decade is touched on briefly. The paper then considers haptic feedback and myoelectric control, two cutting-edge technological fields within the field of prosthetics. A comparison is made between current and past upper limb prostheses and improvements to these prostheses are discussed. Suggestions for future work are made to incorporate and develop haptic feedback and more advanced control algorithms to further improve the current prosthetics. Myoelectric control is identified as the most limiting factor to the progress of upper limb prosthetics.