A Systemic View of an Upper Extremity Prosthesis

When an amputee wears the prosthetic arm, it becomes the amputee´s extended body part. This acquired body part should be as easy as to control the original body part. In this paper, an externally powered upper extremity prosthesis is considered as a system. The necessary components to design a better prosthetic arm are viewed and divided into four subsystems: input, effector, feedback and support. Current research is reviewed in terms of these subsystems. Each subsystem performs its own task, but it is related to each other and together they function to make up a prosthetic upper extremity, which provides the movement to the amputee.