Dennis Aabo Sørensen lost his left hand in a fireworks accident in 2004 but an artificial sensory feedback-enabled robotic hand made by scientists in Europe allowed him to feel and sense again.
The bionic hand was developed by Silvestro Micera of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, and his colleagues at the BioRobotics Institute at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (SSSA) in Pisa, Italy. It comes equipped with electronic sensors to detect an object's shape and texture and transmit the information as electrical signal into the surgically implanted electrodes in the amputee's remaining upper arm, which then carry the signal to the brain.
Sørensen had to undergo a surgery to implant the electrodes into the nerves of his upper arm and go through months of training to use the bionic hand but it is paying off as the device gave him the ability to experience touch sensation again.
"The sensory feedback was incredible," said 36-year old Sørensen, who lost his arm on New Year 's Eve of 2004. "I could feel things that I hadn't been able to feel in over nine years."
The bionic hand, which was described in the research article "Restoring Natural Sensory Feedback in Real-Time Bidirectional Hand Prostheses", published in the journal Science Translational Medicine Feb. 5, allowed Sørensen to distinguish the texture and shape of different objects even when blindfolded and wearing earplugs.
Scientists have already tried creating artificial hands with a sense of touch but the bionic hand developed by Micera's team does not only give the wearer the ability to identify shapes and textures but also allows him to adjust his grasp.
"This is the first time in neuroprosthetics that sensory feedback has been restored and used by an amputee in real-time to control an artificial limb," Micera said.
However, it was not easy because "We were worried about reduced sensitivity in Dennis' nerves since they hadn't been used in over nine years," says Stanisa Raspopovic, first author and scientist at EPFL and SSSA.
The developers hope that the artificial hand would pave way to a true bionic hand that could feel and move and improve the quality of artificial hands. "This approach could improve the efficacy and "life-like" quality of hand prostheses, resulting in a keystone strategy for the near-natural replacement of missing hands," the scientists wrote.
