CyberLimb: a novel robotic prosthesis concept with shared and intuitive control.

The evaluation involved a single trans-radial amputee pilot, so it describes one person's experience and cannot establish effectiveness for other amputees. CyberLimb was a prototype, not market-ready, and the paper states it was far too heavy for daily tasks. The device weighed 1.95 kg, almost twice the pilot's daily prosthesis at 1.03 kg, and its width prevented completion of the laundry task. It was built for Cybathlon tasks, including a notch for competition scissors, so it may not generalize to everyday objects or activities. EMG control was abandoned after 22 hours of training, and the headband was used instead, so the comparison with EMG is not a controlled test. The haptic object classifier was trained on 300 grasps, and a sensor failure prevented completion of the Haptic Box task in competition. The headband, smartphone interface, backpack, wrist auto-leveling, manual forearm rotation, and training were used together, so the contribution of any single component cannot be separated. The cost comparison was uncertain because the pilot's daily prosthesis price was not revealed and CyberLimb had no certification or clinician evaluation costs.

Funding was provided by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Lighthouse Initiative Geriatronics by LongLeif GaPa gGmbH, and Technische Universität München (1025).

Do not conclude that CyberLimb is an effective daily prosthesis or that the headband control will work for other amputees. It was tested in a single pilot during Cybathlon training and competition, and the paper reports that the device was too heavy for daily tasks and that some tasks failed because of time constraints and sensor failure.