Amazing advancements are being made in the area of prosthetic limbs. I have always thought that if I were to lose a hand or a foot I’d want to enlist the aid of some of my friends that build robots to help come up with a mechanical solution to my dilemma. From what I’ve read about body replacements such as these its hard to do better than the old fashioned spring loaded claw/hook. I think that a real solution will only come when battery technology reaches the kilowatt per gram range, or a motor that uses picowatts of power yet still delivers foot pounds of torque are available.
These guys are getting there though. As you can see by the quoted article below, they have movement down:
Funded by the Future and Emerging Technologies initiative of the IST programme, the CYBERHAND project aims to hard wire this hand into the nervous system, allowing sensory feedback from the hand to reach the brain, and instructions to come from the brain to control the hand, at least in part…So far, the project is racking up an impressive list of achievements. It has a complete, fully sensitised five-fingered hand. The CYBERHAND prototype has 16 Degrees of Freedom (DoFs) made possible by the work of six tiny motors. Each of the five fingers is articulated and has one motor dedicated to its joint flexing for autonomous control. It features that miracle of evolution, the opposable thumb, so the device can perform different grasping action
They also have a working solution to the feedback needed to accuratly use a prosthetic hand. This is in the form of Thin Film Longitudinal IntraFascicular Electrodes. Lets hope that testing begins soon for this device, I’m sure that there are more than enough people who would be willing to test this for them. Next they should work on a prosthetic foot. It would have to be cheap enough to be given out by aid orginizations around the world.
