Victorian scientists develop robotic arm that gives amputees and stroke victims sense of touch - Invest Victoria

Melbourne researchers have developed a robotic arm to send signals to the brain that could enable amputees to regain a sense of touch and increased movement to missing limbs. The joint project between St Vincent's Hospital's Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery and Melbourne University is looking at how arm and brain signals communicate. Two recent breakthroughs have seen researchers decode the complex signals the human brain uses to control movement, as well as discovering a way of passing messages directly from a brain to a mechanical arm. Research has been ongoing for several years, but scientists believe they are even closer to simulating a'normal' arm and to control the movement of a prosthetic limb in the same way they move a normal human arm and hand. They hope to breakthrough in the next couple of years as understanding of how the brain reads and interprets signals increases.