Tag Archives: Prosthetics

What is Open Bionics?

There are people all around the world that may loose limbs for various reasons — wars, illness, and accidents being the three major ones. Artificial limbs do alleviate a part of the loss these folks experience, but often, their high cost means not all can afford a prosthetic limb. Open Bionics is a company making affordable bionic arms, making kids feel like superheroes.

A start-up tech company in the UK, Open-Bionics is changing the way people see prostheses. The 3-D printed prostheses Open Bionics makes are nearly 30-times cheaper than those available in the market are. Their biggest advantages are the myoelectric sensors that attach to the skin for detecting muscle movements. Detection of muscle movement controls the artificial hand in closing and opening fingers.

The bionic arms that Open Bionics makes are custom-built for individual children and require about 40 hours for manufacturing them. As the child grows, a revolutionary socket adjusts to the changing size. As these are small and lightweight, children as young as eight can use the bionic arms with ease.

According to the COO and co-founder of Open Bionics, Samantha Payne, they work with the NHS for creating prosthetics that are affordable and highly functional. These are meant especially for children, and come with removable covers—allowing them to choose whether they want to be Queen Elsa, or an Avenger today.

The company has a royalty-free agreement with Disney. That means they can base the removable covers on the bionic arms on characters from Star Wars, Frozen, Iron Man, and more—this can be life changing for small children, as Samantha Payne assures. For instance, Tilly Lockey, who is testing the latest model from Open Bionics, has a prototype hand themed on Deus Ex, a video game.

Open Bionics builds assistive devices offering people who use them greater freedom and independence. Moreover, as the devices are affordable, it brings bionic technology within the reach of most patients. That is why trials of bionic arms are reaching children as young as eight.

Most available prostheses do not suit young patients, as they are either way too big or very expensive. The 3-D printed bionic limbs from Open Bionics are different as they are custom-built to suit small sizes, and they are affordable. Samantha Payne feels highly satisfied seeing a young child moving their fingers individually for the first time.

Rather than making a drab skin-colored artificial limb, Open Bionics is making their arms belong to the science fiction universe. With themes from Star Wars, Disney, and Marvel, kids feel proud when wearing their prostheses. As these arms are sleek and super stylish, amputee children can identify them with their personalities and that is what makes them and the people at Open Bionics so excited.

At Open Bionics, the task begins with scanning the person’s limb using a tablet. A plan for the design of the prostheses follows, leading to a 3-D printout. The result is a low-cost, multi-grip, and lightweight bionic arm with great control. The royalty-free theme designs make the device hyper-personalized. The presence of nearly 5 million upper-limb amputees worldwide gives an estimate of the market potential for Open Bionics.

Graphene Cells Generate Energy for Prosthetic Hands

At the Glasgow University, Scotland, a team of scientists has discovered a new use for graphene cells —the honeycomb form of carbon. They are using it to develop prosthetic limbs or more specifically, robotic arms with a sense of touch built-in.

The world over, several researchers and their teams are trying to make synthetic skin, which is flexible, and at the same time, has a sense of touch similar to the various types of sensory receptors the human skin possesses. At the Glasgow University, the scientists are powering an experimental form of electronic skin. They are using the power produced by solar cells made of graphene.

Although many types of prosthetic hands are available that can reproduce several mechanical functions of human limbs, the sense of touch is one not included yet. It would benefit the amputees a lot, if they could use a prosthetic hand that could sense what it touched, as this would be much closer to a real hand.

Such prosthetic systems do need clean electric energy, but providing that is hardly an easy task. However, the team of researchers from the School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow has discovered that by using ultra-thin honeycomb of carbon, also called graphene, they can generate the necessary clean power derived from the Sun.

Incorporating these clean energy generators in electronic skin with the sense of touch means robots can enhance their ability and performance when interacting with humans and detect potential dangers in a better way.

The team, led by Ravinder Bahiya, describes the process of integrating such photovoltaic cells made of graphene into the electronic skin, in detail, in the journal Advanced Functional Material.

Now the team is planning to use the same technology for powering other motors driving the prosthetic hand. According to the team, this is the only way they will be creating a prosthetic limb that is completely autonomous in its energy generation—something close to the normal limb.

Graphene Cells / Graphene Solar Cells

Graphene is actually a single layer of carbon atoms bonded together in a repeating pattern of hexagons. This structure makes it a two-dimensional material with amazing characteristics—a wonder material with extreme strength, flexibility, transparency, and astonishing conductivity. As it is made from carbon, a material abundantly available on the earth, graphene has the endless potential to improve existing products, while inspiring new ones.

Graphene’s superb transparency and conductivity make it an excellent choice for solar cells. However, although a great conductor in itself, graphene is not good at collecting the electrical current produced within the solar cell. While looking at alternative ways of modifying graphene for the purpose, scientists found graphene oxide (GO) to be more suitable for solar cells. Graphene oxide, although less conductive than graphene, is more transparent and a better charge collector.

Most organic cells generally use conductive indium tin oxide (ITO) and a non-conductive glass layer as their transparent electrodes. However, ITO is a brittle and rare substance that makes solar panels expensive. On the other hand, graphene as a replacement for ITO makes cheaper electrodes for photovoltaic cells.

Amputee Patients Feel Again Using Bionic Fingers

Although prosthetics do help amputees to get back some use of their missing limb, feeling is not among them. However, that may soon be changing now. Bionics prosthetics research from EPFL is promising enough to allow an amputee patient to perceive and distinguish between smooth and rough textures. An artificial finger connected surgically to nerves in the upper part of the patient’s arm does the trick. It is expected that this advance will expedite the development of the sense of touch in prosthetic limbs.

The EPFL research has also proven that the same prosthetic touch sensors meant for amputees can be easily tested on people who are able-bodied. For instance, non-amputee persons can feel roughness by stimulation of their nerves – without surgery.

Sylvestro Micera and his team at EPFL in Switzerland and SSSA in Italy have developed this technology in collaboration with Calogero Oddo and his team at SSSA – they have published the results in eLife. Their research is opening new windows on the development of bionic prostheses, and sensory perception is helping to improve the progress.

Dennis Aabo Sørensen, a hand amputee, is helping EPFL with its prosthetic research for some time. The team has implanted electrodes above the stump on his left forearm. The bionic finger connected to his stump allows him to feel sensations of texture at the tip of the index finger of his phantom hand. However, he still feels his missing hand as if he had a closed fist.

When EPFL connected a bionic hand to the electrodes in his left forearm, S⌀rensen could recognize both shape and softness. This time, the team wired the bionic finger to the electrodes meant for his fingertip. Rubbing the bionic finger against several pieces of plastic engraves with different patterns produced a sensation of texture at the tip of the index finger of his phantom hand. For 96 percent of the time, Sørensen was able to differentiate correctly between smooth and rough plastics using his bionic finger.

The group at SSSA in Italy tested the bionic finger on non-amputees while the subjects wore EEG caps. They noted the brain activity of the subjects while they were touching the plastic surfaces with their actual finger. They then compared these against the activity detected while they touched the same surfaces with the bionic fingertip. This was proof to the scientists that bionic fingers could activate the same parts of the brain, as did the real digits.

Therefore, the team is confident not only about leading to prosthetics that can feel, but also about offering the power of artificial touch to industrial, surgical and rescue robots as well.

The artificial fingertip was equipped with sensors that were wired to nerves in Sørensen’s arm. As the fingertip, assisted by a machine, moved over different pieces of plastic with smooth or rough patterns engraved on it, the sensors generated appropriate electrical signals. These signals were then translated into a series of electrical spikes to imitate the language of the nervous system. Once the spikes were delivered to the nerves, Sørensen was able to distinguish between rough and smooth surfaces with repeatable accuracy.