Bionic Hand Wired Into Nervous System

Posted 29 Nov 2005 at 13:05 UTC by The Swirling Brain

A bionic hand that can allow the wearer to touch and feel is being developed in Europe as an initiative of the IST program. The idea is to give a amputee a replacement natural sensory feedback robotic limb. The CYBERHAND is a fully sensitized five fingered robotic hand that has 16 Degrees of Freedom provided by 6 tiny motors. CYBERHAND works similarly to a real hand that pulls tendons via muscles by working cables via the tiny motors. CYBERHAND uses Longitudinal IntraFascicular Electrodes (LIFEs) to connect the hand to the wearer's nervous system and includes sensors for tension, force, joint angle, end stroke and contact. Although this bionic hand has not been tested on a human yet, testing should begin as early as 2006 with a unit possibly for sale as early as 2011.