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.

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