Science fiction fans love robots, cyborgs, humans that are part machine and machines that act like humans. While Six Million Dollar Man prosthetics are still the stuff of fiction, scientists inch ever closer toward the dream of prosthetic devices that are adequate replacements for a lost body part.
Silvestro Micera, a neural engineer at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in Switzerland, led the team that developed a new prosthetic device that they call the “bionic hand.” Dennis Aabo Sørensen is the man in the video that tested the hand for the team. This new technology relies on touch sensors that are connected to electrodes that have been surgically embedded in the nerves of the man’s upper arm.
While this is a long way from being available to amputees, it’s an amazing breakthrough for an amputee to be able to feel again with fingers that he no longer has.
What science fiction invention would you most like to see become science fact?
*Story via Livescience.com.
Natalie Wright, Author 