Researcher Lee Fisher (left) is working to merge prosthetic limbs with the nervous system. Pat Bayne (right) says a prototype has partially restored her sense of touch: "I know there's no hand there, but I can feel it." Researcher Lee Fisher (left) is working to merge prosthetic limbs with the nervous system. Pat Bayne (right) says a prototype has partially restored her sense of touch: "I know there's no hand there, but I can feel it." A team at the University of Pittsburgh is trying to make prosthetic limbs that work like the one in a Star Wars movie. After Luke Skywalker loses a hand in a lightsaber fight, "They give him this new hand, and you can't tell that it's not his own," says Lee Fisher, a biomedical engineer.

This is the most advanced robotic hand ever created - with a design that will lower the price significantly - marking a breakthrough for the field of prosthetics. The so-called Hennes hand, developed by Italian researchers, has only one motor that controls all five fingers, making it lighter, cheaper and more able to adapt to the shape of objects. It weighs about the same as a human hand, and uniquely uses sensors that react to electrical signals from the brain to the muscles, which is much simpler than other'myoelectric prosthetics'. The simplicity will allow the team to price the device about 30 percent cheaper than other models on the market, at 10,000 euros ($11,900). All together, lead researcher Lorenzo De Michieli says there has never been such a natural and accessible option for amputees.

ROME – Italian researchers on Thursday unveiled a new robotic hand they say allows users to grip objects more naturally and features a design that will lower the price significantly. The Hennes robotic hand has a simpler mechanical design compared with other such myoelectric prosthetics -- which are characterized by sensors that react to electrical signals sent from the brain to the muscles -- said researcher Lorenzo De Michieli. He helped develop the hand in a lab backed by the Italian Institute of Technology and the INAIL state workers' compensation prosthetic center. The Hennes has only one motor that controls all five fingers, making it lighter, cheaper and more able to adapt to the shape of objects. "This can be considered low-cost because we reduce to the minimum the mechanical complexity to achieve, at the same time, a very effective grasp, and a very effective behavior of the prosthesis," De Michieli said.

WASHINGTON – A next-generation artificial hand is letting two amputees tell the difference between a soft or firm touch -- like holding a child without squeezing too tightly. It's another step toward developing prosthetics that can feel. Implanted electrodes allowed the men to feel the same intensity of pressure in the artificial hand as they could in their other hand, scientists at Case Western Reserve University reported Wednesday. To Keith Vonderhuevel, testing the experimental device meant finally cradling his 2-year-old granddaughter without first taking off his artificial hand for fear of hurting her. "Just to be able to touch and feel, it's an amazing thing," said Vonderhuevel, of Sidney, Ohio, who lost his right arm below the elbow 11 years ago in a job accident.

At the end of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker feels when a needle pricks his newly-installed bionic hand. Researchers report today in the journal Science Translational Medicine that they can do something similar: stimulating regions of a human test subject's brain with electrodes can recreate the perception of touch in a robotic hand. This year, about 280,000 people in the United States alone are living with a spinal cord injury, according to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center. Depending on the severity, damaged nerve connections lead to effects ranging from a partial loss of feeling to complete loss of motion in different limbs. "If you lose that sense of touch, you have a really difficult time" grabbing, holding, and manipulating different objects, says Richard Gaunt, a neuroengineer at the University of Pittsburgh who works on touch feedback for prosthetics.

When researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center blindfolded a paralyzed man whose was linked to a robotic hand, he could successfully identify which fingers were being touched 84 percent of the time. Mind-controlled robot arms can now generate feelings of touch, based on new research from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The study, published today in Science Translational Medicine, represents a first for brain-computer interfaces and fulfills a major stage in creating robotic prosthetic arms for tetraplegics that can hold objects. "One of the reasons providing sensation is really important is when you reach out to pick something up, it's that sense of touch that allows you to hold the object properly," Robert Gaunt, the project's leader and a physical medicine and rehabilitation researcher at Pitt, told the NewsHour. That's because to touch an object like an apple, your brain requires two things: movement and feeling.

This could be the most touchy-feely robotic limb yet. For the first time, brain stimulation has made it possible for a paralysed person to experience the sensation of touch via a bionic hand. Robert Gaunt at the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and his team achieved this by implanting electrodes in the brain of Nathan Copeland, a 28-year-old quadriplegic. These were inserted into the region of the brain that registers touch from the hand, and linked to a robotic hand in the same room via a computer. When this robotic hand was touched, it triggered stimulation of Copeland's brain.