Human hand

Scientists have developed a new ultra-light limb that can mimic the movement in a real hand better than any currently available.

Their research was presented at the Institute of Physics conference Sensors and their Applications XIII which took place at the University of Greenwich, Kent, UK.

Every year 200 people in the UK lose their hands. Common causes include motorbike accidents and industrial incidents. Currently available prosthetic hands are either simple mimics that look like a hand but don't move or moving hands which have a simple single-motor grip.

The human hand has 27 bones and can make a huge number of complex movements and actions. Dr. Paul Chappell, a medical physicist from the University of Southampton has designed a prototype hand that uses 6 sets of motors and gears so that each of the five fingers can move independently. This enables it to make movements and grip objects in the same way a real human hand does.