Prosthetic Hand with Real-time Sensory Feedback

Silvestro Micera of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland has recently revealed the medical innovation for the amputees. It is the first bionic hand that allows amputees to feel what they are touching. The sources revealed that if new operation at the end of this year proves successful, a new generation of artificial limbs with sensory perception will be introduced.

Dr Micera said that the hand will be attached directly to the patient’s nervous system via electrodes clipped onto two of the arm’s main nerves, the median and the ulnar nerves.

This should allow the man to control the hand by his thoughts, as well as receiving sensory signals to his brain from the hand’s sensors. It will effectively provide a fast, bidirectional flow of information between the man’s nervous system and the prosthetic hand.

“This is real progress, real hope for amputees. It will be the first prosthetic that will provide real-time sensory feedback for grasping”.

“It is clear that the more sensory feeling an amputee has, the more likely you will get full acceptance of that limb,” he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston.

“We could be on the cusp of providing new and more effective clinical solutions to amputees in the next year,” he said.

After the patient wears the bionic hand for a month, scientists hope to see how he’ll adapt to the artificial limb and in case all goes well, a full working model will be ready for testing within two years.

           

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