Hello lovely readers welcome to the last part of totally armless, in this final issue we will be recapping and reviewing the up and coming technology of robotic prosthesis.

In this blog we spoke about the advanced motions that robotic limbs have started to be able to achieve. In the video below, the company open bionics have developed a robotic hand that manages to perform delicate tasks such as using tweezers to pick up a screw and even tasks that involve heavy lifting such as lifting a chair or a full shopping bag. Though the implementation on an amputee has yet to be seen, this advancement in precision will help shape the future of this technology.

This prosthetic also has proportional control. This means amputees can choose how much power to move their fingers with, this affects the speed and force of grip. So, an amputee can hold a bottle and choose to squeeze the bottle harder if they think the bottle might slip. 

Up until this point robotic prosthesis is still under heavy development and therefore the cosmetics for this technology is not currently under consideration, and solely in development for practical use and comfort for the user. Though because of this obvious robotic limb being shown in the public, because of the transparent difference between flesh and metal, it may draw the gaze of people around them. Which gives off a science fiction sort of theme, but with the growing diversity of the people, this difference in appearance might not be taken with as much stigma as it would have in the past.

In terms of  this kind of prosthetic I have only touched upon the base of this subject, other features and implementations of this have advanced to such an extent that by connecting the robotic limb to the nerves, it can send electrical stimulation to the brain, allowing the user to emulate the feeling of being touched, and enabling the amputee to restore their missing feeling commonly found with standard prosthesis. According to DARPA, the sensors and motors have a 100% accuracy when measuring how much pressure and the location of where they were being touched, developing a near realistic sense of sense. The ability to feel is a key feature in this field, as day to day tasks require that sense of feeling in order to perform such tasks with a high accuracy and "feel the room".

This is a golden age of technology where science fiction such as robotic limbs are becoming a reality, in this age, technological advancement has no limit and continues to rapidly grow. With this, Thank you all for reading this, I am done.

References

http://www.openbionics.com/blog/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/14/robotic-hand-wired-directly-into-brain-feel-again-darpa