ACTION ENHANCEMENT DRIVES THE EMBODIMENT OF A SUPERNUMERARY ROBOTIC DIGIT

Wearable robotic supernumerary limbs enhance motor capabilities by leveraging principles from both engineering and neuroscience. Despite extensive research, how supernumerary limbs become embodied and the relationship between embodiment and artificially enhanced action possibilities remain largely unexplored. This gap has implications for device design and clinical adoption, as embodiment likely promotes patients’ acceptance and daily use of their supernumerary limb. Using an adapted proprioceptive drift paradigm from rubber hand illusion research, we investigated the embodiment of a robotic Soft Sixth Finger (SSF). Participants performed grasp-to-lift actions versus mere lift actions without object interaction, wearing the SSF on two different configurations: the palm and back of the hand. The Palm condition involved achievable actions without the SSF, while the Dorsal condition enabled otherwise anatomically impossible actions, extending beyond the physiological motor repertoire. Hand proprioceptive drift was measured before and after each task. Results showed that the SSF impacted body representation only when dorsally mounted. Proprioceptive drift was significantly higher for grasp-to-lift actions in Dorsal versus Palm conditions and higher for grasp-to-lift versus mere lift in the Dorsal condition only. This proves that SSF embodiment relates to extending, rather than substituting, users’ action possibilities. Future research must integrate behavioral, cognitive, and neural measurements across healthy and patient populations. Our study provides an ideal model for clinical application, demonstrating how enabling otherwise impossible actions drives robotic supernumerary finger embodiment.