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Bionic Hand Makes it to Market
root_42 writes "The BBC reports that a Scottish company has developed a bionic prosthetic hand, which is now going to market: 'The thumb and fingers can move and grip just like a human hand and are controlled by the patient's mind and muscles ... Mr Gow, who is the director of rehabilitation engineering services at NHS Lothian, told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme: "It's the first hand to come to the market that's actually had bending fingers just like your own hand."' The device really seems very "cool", compared to other prosthetics, and seems to allow the patients a wide variety of day-to-day activities. Also check out the patient gallery."
Anyone know anything about the cost of these things? The cynic in me is imagining lawyers feverishly rewriting health insurance coverage clauses. I hope that as it becomes widespread, that "joe war-amputee" can afford it.
u-bend
I'm already shuddering at the thought of the comments about to befall this story.
These people look really happy. I'm so excited for them. To have regained this much manipulation is amazing. Best of luck for these patients and this company
It would really suck to lose a hand but it would be awesome to gain a remote-controlled Thing. I for one welcome our scampering disembodied robotic hand masters. :)
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Better think way out of the box then. We have about a zillion things that are designed to be gripped and operated by a person's hand(s). Removing that interface requires that you adapt all those tools to be compatible with the next physical interface point (such as the elbow or shoulder?), as well as figuring out a logical control scheme that is as intuitive as what everyone is familiar with. Direct neural control of an angle grinder, for example, isn't very compelling to me. If you had a hand with hardwired GPS (as another example) then you'd have to map its control functions into something that the user could learn, and it would have to use the arm nerves as the interface... and they're normally only used to position the fingers and relay back touch and hot/cold/pain sensations. An interesting problem but just because you can, doesn't always mean that you should.
Less is more.