We’ve all seen how prosthetics help folks with missing limbs, but we don’t always get to see them made by the same people who wear them.
This could be because the limbs they are missing involve one or both of their arms, which a lot of people deem essential in making anything of value, much less something they can use as a mechanical appendage. Another issue is having the technical know-how to create such an appendage, as you can’t really make an arm out of sticks and stones. (There’s bound to be someone out there who will prove me wrong, though!)
After suffering an accident that resulted in the loss of four of the five fingers on his left hand, Ian Davis set out to improve the partial prosthetic market by creating cool and functional attachments that can be used by disabled people worldwide. And what better way to start it than making prosthetics for his missing digits?
One of his first prosthetic designs is a two-fingered, bio-electric prosthesis. And while Ian thinks of this as his “mitten hand”, others familiar with pop culture will immediately draw parallels to the three-fingered turtles with attitude – the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Unlike the mutant turtles who had no say in their anatomy, the design for this prosthesis was intentional. The hand itself is made of printed resin and uses Force Sensitive Resistor (FSR) sensors to detect motion from Ian’s flesh and blood hand. When he tries to move his fingers, the sensors turn this request into motion and activate the servos on the fingers. To limit the servo motion, he also installed an FSR sensor onto each of the two fingertips.
Read the rest at SolidSmack
