Scientists create advance prosthetic hand

Hello all,

Scientists in Southampton have created a clever artificial hand, including motorized opposable thumbs. This looks like a great technology, which can help a lot of people. The technology shows how a person could use the hand to open a door with keys, which is very difficult, as my cousin is never able to even pick up a set of keys with his current prosthetic.
news.bbc.co.uk...

RAJ

Very interesting developement! Glad to see they are finally getting the thumb "problem" solved. I expect great things from these guys when they integrate state of the art sensors into the hand.

That's cool, when do I get my mecha

I'm stoked... that's sweet! maybe they'll have it to the point of the mechanical hands in Sar Wars... just in time for me to lose a hand in a light-sabre battle!

I'm glad to see someone is actually trying to work out the thumb... this is so much better than the old claw-pincher prostetic that most people use. One thing I want to know is whether or not this is powered totally from the human body, or if it has to use rechargable batteries. "Wanna go play a round of golf, Joe?" ... "I can't... my hand is recharging..." That would suck! It's annoying enough for my cell phone to run out of charge when I'm somewhere I can't recharge, but at least I can borrow someone els's phone... with a hand, I just don't see someone asking "My hand's dead, can I borrow yours for a minute?"

Heh, i'm sure Reading University (Which i attend, and conducts similar research) blows this one out of the water. The thing is, for most uses of the hand, you onlt need the thumb and first two fingers, the other two are almost superflous (howevere they realy help a full grip, eg the microphone indicated in the article), so i find it intruging that they too are motorised in this model.

Very cleevr stuff indeed. This is one of the areas i am considering working in when i finish my Masters degree...

But why the rum?!? I mean... what about the batteries???

Thats really cool, I was sorta wondering how long it would be before we werw at this point with prosthetics, not that I have a use for them, but its onew of those things thats interesting to watch and read about.