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Successful Bionic Hand

Posted by timothy on from the fake-toes-just-didn't-make-the-list dept.

nerdygeek writes: "The BBC are reporting the first successful, self-contained Bionic Hand. They've made them small enough for children but they plan to upgrade to adult sizes. It's especially good for young kids since they can adapt and learn to control it very quickly. I thought these kind of things must have been about for ages, but apparently not. I just wonder if they make a Steve Austin style noise when they're used ?" Five kids have the hands so far, about which the article has this to say: "The unit is operated by signals from the brain. The user sends a signal to move a muscle in the forearm, and electrodes detect this and pass the message on to the motors."

1 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Prodigit vs other my-electric hand prostheses by tagishsimon · · Score: 5
    The major differece between ProDigit and previous hand prosthetics is that the motors and gearbox are housed in the finder, not in the palm area of the hand. I *think* the other major difference is that ProDigit has a curling finger action, whilst conventional myo-electric prostheses tend to have a prehensile grip in which the fingers do not curl. The hand has a more anthropomorphic design, in that the thumb abducts across the palm - conventional myos tend to have a straight opposing thumb.

    There is more good stuff about - not sure how much is in ProDigit - such as better acquisition of EMG signals; use of sensors within the hand to augment the control function (e.g. incipient slip sensors which can tighten the grip without user intervention); adaptive control for different grip postures - precision, power and prehension...

    Power is still a major issue; equally we all know battery technology has come on in bounds in the last ten years, and shaped batteries offer the prospect of further diminshing the package size.

    One poster talked nonsense about "the indignity of being strapped to a machine". Roughly 102,000 persons in the US (251 M inhabitants = 1 in 2460) have absence or loss of an upper extremity. Myo-prosthesis are suitable for about 41,000 of them. In the western world, the market is about 132,000. Most users have had years of being supplied with crap prosthetics. ProDigits and its ilk *majorly* improve the functional capabilites of their users, & the work of David Gow and the PMR team is to be welcomed.