The Robot Body Project

I-DIGITS QUANTUM PROSTHETIC HAND

​Hanger Clinic offers the latest partial hand prosthetic technology. Based on the reliable and industry-leading design of the i-limb™ product range, the i-digits™ quantum hand combines unsurpassed functionality with style. The i-limb quantum hand incorporates Touch Bionic's patented and ground-breaking i-mo™ technology and is the first partial hand prosthesis that can change grips with a simple gesture.

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In a world where radical advances in technology are taken for granted, Media Lab researchers design technologies for people to create a better future.

The Media Lab came into being in 1980 through the efforts of Professor Nicholas Negroponte and former MIT President and Science Advisor to President John F. Kennedy, Jerome Wiesner. The Lab grew out of the work of MIT's Architecture Machine Group, and remains within MIT's School of Architecture + Planning.

The Media Lab opened the doors to its I.M. Pei-designed Wiesner Building in 1985, and in its first decade was at the vanguard of the technology that enabled the digital revolution and enhanced human expression: innovative research ranging from cognition and learning, to electronic music, to holography. In its second decade, the Lab literally took computing out of the box, embedding the bits of the digital realm with the atoms of our physical world. This led to expanded research in wearable computing, wireless “viral” communications, machines with common sense, new forms of artistic expression, and innovative approaches to how children learn.

Now, in its fourth decade, the Media Lab continues to check traditional disciplines at the door. Product designers, nanotechnologists, data-visualization experts, industry researchers, and pioneers of computer interfaces work side by side to invent—and reinvent—how humans experience, and can be aided by, technology.

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Targeted reinnervation enables amputees to control motorized prosthetic devices and to regain sensory feedback. Capable of effectuating almost all of the movements as a human arm and hand and, with more than 100 sensors in the hand and upper arm, the Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) is the world’s most sophisticated upper-extremity prosthesis

Revolutionizing Prosthetics is developing a robust hybrid neural interface approach that capitalizes on the strengths of individual signal sources and provides a flexible solution set suitable for a breadth of injuries. Sensory feedback is crucial for effective performance of daily activities, so the fully sensorized limb system supports biofidelic feedback options consistent with the hybrid strategy for closed-loop control.

Several types of recording devices are used to record various biological signals from muscles, peripheral nerves, and the cortex for the purpose of motor decoding. Implanted intramuscular electrodes and surface electromyogram electrodes are used to record muscle activity; implantable peripheral nerve electrode intercept signals, propagating along peripheral nerves; and implantable cortical electrode capture spike and local field potentials, near their origins in the primary motor, premotor, and posterior parietal cortices.

Comfortable, intuitive and precise, bebionic continues to transform the lives and abilities of amputees around the world. From helping them perform simple tasks like tying their shoelaces, to giving them back their control and pride.

With 14 different grip patterns and hand positions, the bebionic artificial hand is designed to handle almost anything that you need to do in an average day: from eating meals and carrying bags, to opening doors, switching on lights, and typing.

The hand is available in three different sizes and with four wrist options to suit individual requirements

​Open Bionics will use 3D printing to bring these limbs to market, and will be providing its blueprints and designs royalty free, allowing consumers to modify and create them at home. The hand, printed in a flexible material, took just over 24 hours to print on a desktop Ultimaker 3D printer, and was programmed to perform six different actions.    

The Phantom Limb project, commissioned by Metal Gear Solid makers Konami, is a collaboration of artists, makers, engineers, and roboticists that set out to fuse medical technology with the world of video games.