Development of power driver for vibration generator of bionic-like feedback for smart prosthesis

According to World Health Organization data about one billion of people worldwide are disabled people. About one third of these people are people with mobility or movements impairments. First problem is that for that kind of people high precision prosthetic devices with neural control and feedback are very expensive. Second problem almost all average price prosthetic devices have visual feedback system which loads user vision. To solve these two problems it was decided to develop prosthetic devices with other kind of feedback systems: thermal, electrical, pressure, vibration...etc. A vibro-tactile test bench was developed to evaluate vibration feedback systems. Vibro-tactile test bench works in wide range of frequencies and magnitudes. The main goal of the presented paper is to define the most optimal power driver. As main parameter is chosen acceleration magnitude dependence on frequency and input signal magnitude. Three possible solutions were tested: direct connection to analog discovery kit, connection trough A - type audio amplifier and connection trough B - type audio amplifier. As result the most optimal solution was A - type amplifier. It has unipolar supply, and output signal value is the same as for B - type amplifier..