An Italian company is developing a highly capable 3D printing replacement prosthetic hand.
YouBionic’s hand mechanism is far more than just looking like a hand. It includes the ability to perform a wide variety of common movements that anyone would require, all under control of the amputee wearer.
In this video you can see how hand control works. By simply flexing the muscles in various combinations, much like you’d do on any gadget, you can instruct the bionic hand to perform the required motion. You can make a fist, open hand, grab with two fingers and much more.
This motion is possible because of the intricate design of the hand itself. Here you can see a video of the 3D printed portion of the model, which shows the incredible mechanical design developed to produce the correct motions:
But how does the control work? YouBionic simply uses off-the-shelf parts, such as an Arduino controller, to make things happen. Here we can see how their prototype hooks up to the hand. In production versions, we expect this control hardware to be suitable hidden within the hand or a portable control box.
This is an experiment at this point, but YouBionic hopes to make them in the future. In fact, in the top image you can see their vision of the future.
It seems they’ll be building more than just hands.
Via YouBionic
