A longtime amputee was able to pluck grapes without crushing them, pick up an egg without cracking it, and put on his wedding ring thanks to a new prosthetic hand that allows its wearers to artificially 鈥渇eel鈥� again.
Real estate agent Keven Walgamott lost his left hand and a portion of his arm during an electrical accident in 2002. Since his amputation, Walgamott has been unable to feel anything in that limb.
That is, until he was fitted with an experimental prosthetic arm for the first time in 2017 that can be directed by the user鈥檚 thoughts.
鈥淚t almost put me to tears,鈥� Walgamott said in a press release on Wednesday. 鈥淚t was really amazing. I never thought I would be able to feel in that hand again.鈥�
Inspired by Star Wars hero Luke Skywalker鈥檚 robotic hand in the film 鈥淭he Empire Strikes Back,鈥� the new-and-improved 鈥淟UKE arm鈥� was developed by researchers from the University of Utah in collaboration with the University of Chicago and the Cleveland Clinic.
The enhanced prosthetic mimics the way a human hand feels objects by sending signals back to the brain, according to the researchers.
鈥淲e changed the way we are sending that information to the brain so that it matches the human body. And by matching the human body, we were able to see improved benefits,鈥� the project鈥檚 lead author Jacob George said in the release.
In order to allow the wearer to sense if something is soft or hard and how to pick it up, the researchers developed a system that allows the prosthetic to 鈥渢ap into鈥� the user鈥檚 nerves through a bundle of 100 microelectrodes and wires that are implanted into the amputee鈥檚 forearm and connected to an external computer. The computer then translates these signals to direct the arm to move.
鈥淲hat we're doing is trying to communicate with the body in the body's natural language and by doing that we saw enhanced benefits with sensory feedback,鈥� George told local station KTVX on Wednesday.
To replicate a sense of touch for the user, the research team outfitted the robotic hand with sensors that send signals to the remaining nerves to mimic the feeling of holding an object.
鈥淲e鈥檙e not quite there yet, but the sense of touch and the sense of movement that we're able to recreate does seem very real, though not quite as rich as what the biological realities are,鈥� Gregory Clark, a biomedical engineering associate professor at the University of Utah, explained to local station KTVX on Wednesday.
While the current prototype can only work while connected to a computer outside the body, the developers said they hope to create a portable version that would be completely wireless.
The research team said they鈥檙e hoping to have the prosthetic arm ready for test subjects鈥� to take home by 2020 or 2021, pending regulatory approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The academics鈥� findings have been published in the .
