Abstract:
Current solutions for the control of active upper-limb prostheses are mostly based on
EMG signals acquisition and processing and on electronic switches. Even though efficient for
most clinical cases, these solutions can be unsatisfactorily for the control of prostheses with
multiple joints. Voice-control can be a possible solution for these clinical cases. The aims of
this work were therefore 1) to identify a non-redundant vocabulary for the voice-control of an
active upper-limb prosthesis, by maximising the recognition performances of the voice
controller VR-STAMP (Sensory Inc., Sunnyvale California), and 2) to integrate the VRSTAMP
with a prosthesis controller. A non-redundant vocabulary was identified comprising
26 words. The vocabulary was tested on 16 subjects, reporting no statistically significant
differences between words recognition. The median number of recognitions per word per
subject was 10/10 with an interquartile distance of 1. For the development of the voicecontrolled
prosthesis, a firmware for the VR-STAMP was firstly developed; then, the VRSTAMP
was interfaced via serial-port with the prosthesis controller CLC2000 developed and
commonly used by the INAIL Prostheses Centre.
