WHEN it comes to emulating the human hand, engineers still have a long way to go. But a robotic hand developed by Paul Chappell at the University of Southampton, UK, does a better job than most of allowing people who have lost a hand to perform tasks that most people take for granted 鈥� like grappling with a door key or twisting the lid off a jar.
Unlike most artificial hands, which are either fixed in one position or perform a single movement, each finger of Chappell鈥檚 hand is controlled by a separate motor, and the thumb can rotate and shift position to allow different grasps. The motors are controlled by sensors that detect muscle tension in the arm.
An artificial 鈥渟kin鈥� contains piezoelectric materials that respond to heat and pressure, allowing the hand to sense force and temperature, which should prevent it from sustaining damage or crushing something.
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