A generic high-dexterity soft neuroprosthetic hand for daily activities

Robotic prostheses are the primary technique currently to replace the lost hands of upper-limb amputees. Although various neuroprosthetic hands have been developed, featuring both rigid and soft actuation mechanisms, they typically offer grasping-oriented functionality with significantly fewer degrees of freedom (DOFs, ≤6) compared to the human hand. This limitation often restricts their functional versatility and manipulation adaptability in daily activities. Herein, we report a generic dexterous soft neuroprosthetic hand (DexSoftNeuroHand) with 11 active DOFs that restores commonly-used grasping and fine manipulation functionalities in daily activities, experimentally validated by four amputee subjects (including male and female, young and old in age from 38 to 70). Our DexSoftNeuroHand mechanism compactly integrates bioinspired soft fingers with thumb-palm articulations, enabling both adaptivity and dexterity through a simplified myoelectric control interface. By incorporating commercial 2-channel myoelectric electrodes, four amputee subjects wearing our DexSoftNeuroHand have demonstrated capabilities superior to those of current prostheses in standardized tests and durable experiments during extended 12-hour daily operations. This enhanced performance significantly improves amputees’ participation in daily activities and social interactions, such as braiding a girl’s hair, taking a pill, manipulating scissors, steering a bicycle and car, continuously pinching and screwing a bulb. These results demonstrate that the high-dexterity, soft-robotic hand design expands the opportunities to enhance prosthesis versatility and provides a more natural usage experience, requiring minimal neural control burden.