New technologies give helping hands to amputees and people with upper limb deformities
3D printed prosthetic arms
Helps five year old feel like super hero
Five-year-old Jordan can finally ride his scooter with two hands and grab two objects at the same time. Jordan, born without a left hand, is the youngest person to receive an Open-Bionics 3D printed prosthetic arm, which provide amputees and people born with limb deformities the chance to lead a more normal life.
Initially, Jordan’s mother said, the company thought that he was too young to receive one but she convinced them to meet her son, the BBC reported.
Jordan’s mother had been following the company on Facebook and contacted them when they opened a clinic in New York.
“Initially we were told he was too young and we convinced Open Bionics to see us and luckily he picked it up right away,” she said.
“It was an instant confidence boost; the Hero Arm really makes him feel like a superhero and he is superhero obsessed."
Jordan is one of the first in the U.S. to benefit from the company’s “Hero Arms,” as the company recently raised $5.9 million from venture capital firms, allowing Open-Bionics to open offices in the U.S., according to 3D Printing Industry.
Jordan can be seen enjoying his arm in the Evening Standard video below:
How it works
The prosthetic uses special sensors that detect muscular contractions and turn them into bionic hand movements as shown below in the company’s video:
Other prosthetic hands are also in the works.
Prostheses with life-like bones
Zurich-based Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) is working with American start-up Inkbit to develop hands with human-like bones and tendons using, as ArsTechnica explains:
A team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and US-based startup Inkbit have figured out a way to 3D print the world’s first robotic hand with an internal structure composed of human-like bones, ligaments, and tendons.
ETH has developed a new 3D inkjet deposition method to produce the hand, called vision-controlled jetting (VCJ) which is,
. . . a 3D printing process involved the use of soft, slow-curing thiolene polymers. “These have very good elastic properties and return to their original state much faster after bending than polyacrylates,” said Katzschmann, one of the authors on a new paper that describes the new method.
The video below is an ETH tutorial showing how it's done:
Prostheses restores primitive sensation
MIT and Shanghai Jiao Tong University researchers are developing an inflatable neuroprosthetic hand which will be a boon for amputees who have some residual sensation, MIT News reported:
Amputees who tested the artificial limb performed daily activities, such as zipping a suitcase, pouring a carton of juice, and petting a cat, just as well as — and in some cases better than —those with more rigid neuroprosthetics.
The researchers found the prosthetic, designed with a system for tactile feedback, restored some primitive sensation in a volunteer’s residual limb.
“This is not a product yet, but the performance is already similar or superior to existing neuroprosthetics, which we’re excited about,” says Xuanhe Zhao, professor of mechanical engineering and of civil and environmental engineering at MIT. “There’s huge potential to make this soft prosthetic very low cost, for low-income families who have suffered from amputation.”
Below is a video of the hand in operation:
