Robot Hand And Arm Gets Official Approval

From BBC News - Technology:

The Deka Arm has fingers that can move much like real ones making it easier for amputees to feed themselves, zip up clothes and unlock doors. The arm has a much greater range of movement than existing devices many of which are based around metal hooks or designs more than 100 years old. US Army veterans helped to test and refine the prosthetic limb. The Arm was developed with $40m (£24m) of research cash provided by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). That money was part of a larger $100m Revolutionising Prosthetics research project run by Darpa that aimed to radically improve the range of robot limbs available to those who have lost upper limbs. While prosthetics have improved in recent years, much of the development work has been done on legs rather than replacements for lost arms and hands. This is because of the formidable engineering challenges of reproducing the co-ordinated movement of human hands and fingers. Currently, officially approved designs for replacement arms are often based around split metal hooks - a design first drawn up in 1912.

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