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

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 :)

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.