Clever Artificial Hand Developed

AccUser writes "The BBC is reporting that scientists have developed an ultra-light limb that they claim can mimic the movement in a real hand better than any currently available. Researcher Dr Paul Chappell, a medical physicist who worked on the device, said, 'With this hand you can clutch objects such as a ball, you can move the thumb out to one side and grip objects with the index finger in the way you do when opening a lock with a key, and you can wrap your fingers around an object in what we call the power grip - like the one you use when you hold a hammer or a microphone.'"

Comments

Claims Too Strong!

[DrInequality]

This prosthetic hand may be able to mimic the human hand better than any currently available prosthetic hand.

There are plenty of robot hands that are far better than this. e.g. #1 e.g. #2.

Re:Claims Too Strong!

[Anonymous Coward]

This newly designed hand is only 400g unlike the two that you linked to which are 3.5kg and 1.15kg!! I know which one I would choose. I reckon I would look pretty funny walking with a lean and my wiz bang prosthetic knuckles dragging along the ground getting gravel rash :)

the biggest challenge...

[ErichTheWebGuy]

The biggest challenge of said "hand" will be the adaptation/grafting onto the human body. It will be difficult to train patients to use the new hand, since it has so many possible individual movements. Maybe a wearable device could mitigate that factor,...

Harder to mitigate, however, is going to be the cost. Trying to get this product to be affordable enough to be used by large quantities of people will be another feat, comparable to the one mentioned in TFA.

Re:The hand is not the optimal holding shape

[patio11]

Aside from your solution being squarely in the realm of science fiction at the moment, while folks need hands now, people with disabilities don't want to screamed at every time they look down that they're something other than human (they get that enough from other people, sad but true). The hand is an assistive technology, true, but the goal should be that it "just works" and does so as unobtrusively as possible, so that it doesn't stick out any more than, say, glasses, contacts, cochlear implants, or hearing aids. Having your hand appear the consistency of frying eggs when attempting to pick up your glass at dinner time does not fulfill this important design goal.

Better, Faster, Stronger

[Timberwolf0122]

Building a prosthetic limb is the easy bit in a way, the realy hard work is allowing the user to controll it in a natural way by nerv induction aswell as relay the touch feeling and providing the arm with enough power to last the day.

Ultimately replacement limbs should be better that the originals and this is a fantastic step in the right direction.

Re:The hand is not the optimal holding shape

[koniosis]

I have partial hearing loss and wouldn't even think of using a hearing aid

I'm sorry that you feel that way, I have a number of friends who require and use hearing aids and no one, I mean NO ONE makes a fuss, people don't point and stare even children don't, perhaps you are more paranoid than you think, give them a try and you'll realise that people don't see it as a "disability" any more than glasses after all. If you are really afraid you can get concealed aids that are very hard to notice unless you look someone directly in ear and pay attention. Like you say people who need glasses where them, equally people who need hearing aids wear them but you'll always get people who deny that they need glasses/aids etc etc. You admit that you require a hearing aid, get out there and stop caring what people think (or don't as the case may be) and you'll be back to a world of full stereo enjoyment :D

Re:The hand is not the optimal holding shape

[Doc Ri]

I agree that the best replacement for a lost human hand is probably a human hand. However:

I doubt we're going to come up with a better design than millions of years of natural selection.

I think it is actually easy sometimes. The 'design' of the human eye for instance is crap. No sane engineer would start from a light sensitive sensor, drill a hole through it (thereby creating a blind spot), draw some wires though it and place the readout devices in front of the light sensitive surface (thereby reducing the light sampling ability of the whole device). Octopusses are better off.

Natural selection does not strive for perfection. It works by accumulating small changes. Thus, when you start from a given 'design' only a small subset of all possible 'designs' are in reach.

Re:The hand is not the optimal holding shape

[Anonymous Coward]

My daughter was born with one hand. She has adapted physically and there is very little she can not do, and I mean VERY LITTLE. She can jump rope, tie her shoes, ride a bike with gears and handbrakes, type roughly 20 wpm (and probably 40 WPM in teenage chat speak) and probably five 9's percentage of what everone else with two hands can do.
I know parents get a little crazy with their own kids and want everything to be perfect and many would go through anything to get their young baby equiped with an artifical hand so they can be normal. I assume those same parents feel guilty and want to "help" the child in any way they can and make things right. I am glad we did not go that route as we let her develop and learn on her own. People can work with what they have and they learn to use what they have. I have serious doubts that a parent with different ideas would listen to that and I doubt many doctors would be willing to tell a parent that they should not use an artifical hand, which gives the parents a better feeling they are doing the right thing what ever that may be.
On the down side, my daughter is now high school age and is not happy with herself mentally with only one hand. That is hard to deal with. Fake hand or not, that would be a problem.