We all remember the scene, when Skywalker get in over his head with Vader. The fight ending with Luke losing his hand to his *spoiler* father. Later on, Luke gets the hand replaced with a prosthetic one, that looks identically similar to his real one. He tries out the motions and everything looks spot-on. Here in our galaxy, and in our current time this technology looks to becoming more of a reality. BBC has released an article about the invention, and what it means for the prosthetic business.

In our neighbors across the Atlantic Ocean, an England based bionics company has developed the i-Limb. The device took home the MacRoberts Award; which is the most prestigious engineering award in the country. The i-Limb has been on sale since July 2007, and has been fitted on more than 200 people. Some of them being US troops who lost limbs in the Iraq war.

What makes the prosthetic limb so great, is the attention to detail for the intricate motions of hand gestures. Each finger has a motor which allows it to be move individually. The thumb can be moved in a 90 degree angle, just like our natural thumbs. While there are more advanced prosthetics out there, this is the most advanced for commercial use. The most impressive aspect of the i-Limb in this writer’s opinion is that it doesn’t require surgery to be outfitted. All it takes is two electrodes being attached to the skin, that picks up electrical signals indicating hand usage.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 6:38 am and is filed under Consumer Electronics, Future Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.