Oxford team develops breath-powered hand prosthesis

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Oxford University researchers have developed a new hand prosthesis powered and controlled by the user’s breathing, an advance that provides an alternative to a nineteenth century innovation.

New breath-driven hand prosthetic holding a pen
New breath-driven hand prosthetic holding a pen - Oxford University

The device is claimed to offer an alternative to Bowden cable-driven body-powered prosthetics, particularly for those too young or anatomically unsuited to an uncomfortable harness and cable system. The team’s findings are published in Prosthesis.

In a statement, senior author Professor Jeroen Bergmann, Department of Engineering Science, Oxford University, said: ‘Our breathing-powered device provides a novel prosthetic option that can be used without limiting any of the user’s body movements. It is one of the first truly new design approaches for power and control of a body-powered prosthetic since the emergence of the cable-driven system over two centuries ago.’

Prosthetic options do exist, but little progress has been made in developing new approaches to power and control of body-powered devices compared to externally powered prosthetics.

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The most widely used functional upper-limb prosthesis remains the cable-driven body-powered system – which can be expensive to own and maintain in low-resource settings because of the costs associated with the professional fitting and maintenance.

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breath-powered hand prosthesis