Bionic Hand Picks Up Award

June 10th, 2008 Posted in News

Who said the bionic woman isn’t real? On the other hand, maybe her limbs are a more likely possibility of creation than over exaggerating stunts and super human strengths! It would appear that the bionic hand has won The UK’s top engineering prize. The MacRobert Award was given to the i-LIMB, which is a breakthrough in medical science aimed at acting as a prosthetic device for people who are unfortunate enough to have lost their limbs.

This new innovative creation has been fitted on over 200 people, which include soldiers from America who have lost their limbs during the war in Iraq. The i-LIMB was first developed in 1963 in Scotland, to help young children with Thalidomide. Touch Bionics are the company that produces the device and have released the device for sale from July 2007.

Ray Edward, CEO of the Limbless Association, is one of the people in the UK to have been fitted with the device “I can do a thumbs-up, I can hold a pen and I can do many things that I couldn’t do before.” He boasts after trying out the new limb. This is the world’s first robotic system to have claimed the award from the Royal Academy of Engineering based in London.

Other competitors include the chemical sensor, which detect the early stages of disease and another robotic system that preserves biological samples in sub-zero temperatures.

However, the bionic limb was the one to stand out above its competitors and changed the way prosthetic limbs work. There are two main features; one feature is the motor mechanism built into each finger allowing them to work independently; and the second feature is built into the thumb allowing it to be rotated 90 degrees, much like normal able thumbs. This is a first in prosthesis as it replicates the hand and finger movements almost exactly.

There are laboratory-based prosthetic devices, which is currently being developed by NASA and is a more advanced working prosthetic hand. They contain two electrodes, which sit on the surface of the skin and detect myoelectric signals. The muscle fibres in the body are what create these impulses. CEO of Touch Bionics, Stuart Mead explains “They are used by the computer in the back of the hand, which does two things: it interprets those signals and it controls the hand”.

Touch Bionics are in the midst of presenting a range of prosthetics and developing a new and improved design of the i-LIMB. At present, they are working on a full working arm. For now, the i-LIMB will be placed on display June 12 of this year at the Science Museum in London.