This workshop, organized as part of the IRIM 2023 conference hosted at Maker Faire 2024 (Rome), explored current challenges and future advancements in upper and lower limb prosthetic devices.
Limb loss disrupts bidirectional communication between the brain and the missing limb, leading to severe motor and sensory impairments. While neuroprostheses can significantly improve users’ quality of life, current solutions face limitations, particularly in motion intention recognition and sensory feedback restoration. Reliable signal acquisition and intuitive prosthesis control remain key challenges, with various technologies and decoding approaches being investigated.
Additionally, sensory feedback plays a crucial role in reducing visual burden and enhancing motor function. Although several invasive and non-invasive techniques exist, improvements in sensory transduction, encoding strategies, stimulation hardware, and neural interfaces are still needed to fully restore lost limb functionality.
This workshop covered the state-of-the-art in prosthetic technologies, including interfacing methods, closed-loop control, sensory encoding, myoelectric control, and computational modeling, aiming to define the next steps for developing more effective and reliable prosthetic devices.
