A bionic arm with eight motors that restores heat and pressure sensations, a hand with five independently-moving fingers that automatically senses and adjusts for resistance ? the world of replacement limbs is getting more complex at a dizzying pace this summer.
Scotland-based Touch Bionics this week announced it produced a fully articulated bionic hand that can receive a handshake, grip a tennis ball or turn a doorknob without intense concentration by the patient.
Iraq War veteran Sgt. Juan Arredondo, 27, who lost his left hand in 2005 during a patrol, was one of the first recipients of the i-LIMB.
“To have this movement, it?s ? it?s amazing,” Arredondo said Monday as he showed off the synthetic. “It just gets me more excited about now, about the future.”
The prosthetic hand ? $18,000 not counting medical costs ? is made of semi-translucent plastics. Five individual motors power the fingers, allowing the person to grasp round objects. The hand?s gestures are made possible through electrode plates that detect electrical signals generated in the remaining muscles in the amputated limb.
The hand recognizes resistance and can avoid crushing delicate objects like a Styrofoam cup, said Phil Newman, head of sales for Touch Bionics, and it is durable enough to take the full weight of a grown man. But it?s not fully waterproof and does not provide sensory feedback ? yet.
Another prosthetic, the Proto 1 arm developed in part by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, can provide pressure and heat sensory signals through the same nerves that operate the limb. Unveiled in May, newer versions offering more sophisticated movement are expected before the end of summer, lab researchers said.
That project is part of a four-year Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Both Proto 1 and the i-LIMB can be covered with flexible materials to mimic the look of human skin, called cosmesis.
Arredondo, of San Antonio, Texas, likened the limb to the bionics in “Star Wars” and “Terminator.”
“My son, he goes nuts about it,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
