Question: Does your prosthetic hands connect to the human senses and how do you move your prosthetic hand?

Alejandra Aranceta answered on 6 Mar 2017:

hi Brad7, currently, the artificial hands in the UK do not connect to the sensory receptors in the arms. You cannot feel pain, or temperature, or feel a texture from the prosthetic hand. This is due to the complexity of our anatomy, our sensory pathways are more complicated than the ones that make us move. On this note, there are different things we can do to still make an amputee aware if they are about to have a drink from a very hot cup of tea! For example, you can put a vibrator to move when the artificial hand senses danger (like holding a very hot cup of tea) so that the amputee is aware of that danger, or even having a little flashing light somewhere.

Currently, the prosthetic hand moves whenever the amputee moves any of the remaining muscles of the forearm (although it is not that simple). There are things called electrodes, that work like microphones, they ‘listen’ to the movement of the muscles from the skin, so it doesn’t hurt to have them on. Once the electrodes ‘listen’ to the muscle moving, the artificial hand moves accordingly.