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Amputee Feels in Real-Time with Sensory-Enhanced Prosthetic Hand

Nine years after an accident caused the loss of his left hand, Dennis Aabo Sørensen of Denmark can now feel objects in real-time with a sensory-enhanced prosthetic hand. While blindfolded, Sørensen can grasp objects intuitively and identify what he is touching. The breakthrough sensory feedback technology was developed by Silvestro Micera and his team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Micera and his team enhanced the artificial hand with sensors that detect information about touch. This was done by measuring the tension in artificial tendons that control finger movement and turning this measurement into an electrical current. Using computer algorithms, the scientists transformed the electrical signal into an impulse that sensory nerves can interpret. The sense of touch was achieved by sending the digitally refined signal through wires into four electrodes that were surgically implanted into what remains of Sørensen's upper arm nerves. "This is the first time in neuroprosthetics that sensory feedback has been restored and used by an amputee in real-time to control an artificial limb," says Micera.

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    Transcript

    00:00:04 For the first time, we were able to restore real-time sensory feeling in an amputee while he was controlling this sensorized hand. It was quite amazing because suddenly I could feel something that I haven't been feeling for nine years. My kids, they thought it was cool. They even called me the cable-guy. We performed a 4 week clinical trial, implanting electrodes into the peripheral nerves. The hand has several sensors attached to each tendon of each finger we can use these sensors to understand the level of force the patient was performing while grasping an object.

    00:00:48 We used this force information to deliver very precise stimulation to the different sensory nerves in order to restore this real-time sensory feeling into the nervous system. You can feel round things, hard things and soft things, and the feedback was totally new to me and suddenly when I was doing some movements, I could feel actually what I was doing, instead of looking at what I was doing I would love to have the new prosthesis because it's so amazing to feel something that

    00:01:24 you haven't been able to feel for so many years.