New Prosthetic Hand System Offers Minimal Training And Greater Accuracy

A new prosthetic hand system is showing great potential in performing natural, detailed finger motions with a high accuracy rate.

The prosthetic hand proves to be easy to use after it has been tested by seven participants. Experts hope that this new technology will help amputees have a better quality of life.

The test participants which include an upper-limb amputee tested the full range of motions of the system.

This user-friendly prosthetic hand system could be science’s big leap towards transforming this technology into a more widely accessible one. The research could be found in the Science Robotics journal.

In the United States, there are about 540,000 upper-limb amputees.

And 50 to 60% of them use prosthetic hands every day to improve their life’s quality. Therefore, it is a must for prosthesis manufacturers to make products as comfortable and as easy as possible.

While newer and more advanced models of prosthetics are coming, there are still a lot of work can be done to enhance the affordability and usability of existing models.

The cost for a myoelectric prosthetic, which is available commercially, ranges from $25,000 to $75,000. Moreover, in order to use it effectively, wearers need a lot of training.

That’s why Akira and his colleagues at Hiroshima University came up with a 3D-printed prosthetic hand that is more adaptable.

The hand consists of 5 independently driven fingers. Its control system runs on the “muscle synergy theory” allowing more complex movements.

With this system, wearers can move the different fingers at the same time more effectively compared to existing models. The hand can help amputees perform everyday tasks more easily, like holding a bottle or holding a book.

Participants using the new system were able to do 10 different finger motions with an accuracy rate of more than 90%.

The work of the team shows great promise for the prosthesis’s future. One of the areas that researchers want to focus on is to reduce the fatigue that users feel when they use the prosthetic system for a long time.