WIRED DIRECTLY INTO THEIR NERVOUS SYSTEM, THIS REMARKABLE ROBOTIC HAND WILL SOON ALLOW ONE AMPUTEE TO ACTUALLY TOUCH AND FEEL THINGS AGAIN.
Soon, the first feeling, articulating hand will be transplanted into a living patient (Click Image To Enlarge)
About 50% of amputees don’t use their prosthesis because of relatively basic issues of design--comfort, aesthetic, and controllability. This has led inventor Dean Kamen to famously lament about humanity’s inability to offer our amputees anything better than “a hook on a stick.” Put in those terms, the lack of innovation makes your stomach churn.
It follows up research from 2009 (we believe, seen here) in which a patient was able to feel pin pricks in a tethered robotic hand. He could also wiggle its fingers (Click Image To Enlarge)
But soon, a new bionic hand made by Prensilia may change that. Through a highly experimental test surgery, in a project led by Dr. Silvestro Micera of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, the prosthesis will be wired directly into one test patient’s nervous system, which should enable movement through thought alone, along with the ability for the patient to actually feel what touches his or her mechanical hand.
Today, the hand has been improved. It now has sensors on the palm, fingers, and wrist (Click Image To Enlarge)
The story almost sounds too amazing to be true. But the upcoming surgery is actually a follow up to a 2009 study in which a simpler, fixed model of the hand was wired into a man’s nervous system to provide a sense of touch. It only had basic sensors embedded in the palm, but the patient was able to wiggle his fingers and feel pricks of a needle. Now, the latest wave of hardware and software technology will enable the transplant of a fully articulating, bionic hand (with sensors distributed in each fingertip, the palm, and the wrist). It’s also built with an improved interface that should permit multiple feelings and gestures at once, while the 2009 hand had an extremely limited bandwidth.
That patient will wear the hand for just a month before it’s removed, and then two years later, they’ll receive a more permanent, polished version of the technology.
Plus, it has more bandwidth. So the patient should be able to both feel and move his fingers at the same time (Click Image To Enlarge)
You really can’t overstate the accomplishment at work. Hooked right into the amputee’s nervous system, this hand will be driven by thought alone (and probably a battery pack) (Click Image To Enlarge)
The human hand has always seemed like an invention that only nature could have made over the course of billions of years. Strong enough to crush an orange, deft enough to thread a needle, we’re downright lucky to be born with a pair of the most perfect tools that respond to our every whim. But it’s their ability to feel that elevates them from another tool to part of us, that enables the thousands of tiny compensations we make all day as we interact to the world with softness and force. That’s why this single invention and single surgery is so exciting--it could solve one of the ultimate human-factor issues in medicine. And better still? Researchers say if all goes well, we’ll see widespread clinical adoption of such prostheses in the not-so-distant future.
Successful or not, the hand will live on the patient for just a month, after which time the team will spend the next two years polishing a more final, potentially clinical-ready version (Click Image To Enlarge)
And for the first time in history, we may have developed a halfway decent solution for those missing our most crucial tool, the human hand (Click Image To Enlarge)
COMMENTARY: Prensilia's amazing robotic hand is the closest thing to a real hand by allowiing amputee's to actually feel what they touch. The sense of touch has been missing from artificial limbs and hands for a long time, and finally it looks like we have overcome that weakness. I don't know how much that Prensilia robotic hand will cost, but I have a feeling that it will be relatively expensive until the company can produce them at scale. Hopefully, federal gencies like Medicare and Medicaid will cover all or most of the cost. The world needs this product because it fills such a huge need among disabled amputee's.
Courtesy of an article dated February 27, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design
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