Aadeel Akhtar, a medical student and neuroscience doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), won the $18,000 Illinois Innovation Award for his work developing a low-cost, 3D-printed myoelectric-controlled hand with sensory feedback. The prosthesis, which is currently just a hand prototype, allows users to control it through muscle movements and receive sensory feedback from it.
An Ecuadorian subject tests the Psyonic hand. Photograph courtesy of the Range of Motion Project.
The Technology Entrepreneur Center, which offers the award, says candidates are creative and passionate innovators who work with world-changing technology, are entrepreneurially minded, and a role model for others. Akhtar and UIUC mechanical engineering student Patrick Slade cofounded a startup company, Psyonic, to further develop the prosthesis.
“The amount of progress we have made with these prosthetic devices just within two years is insane,” Akhtar told ChicagoInno after receiving the award. “I’m just grateful that we have the opportunity to build a startup, so I can realize this dream of getting these hands out to people.”
To read about a test of the Psyonic hand, visit “3D-Printed Bionic Hand With Sensory Feedback Tested in Ecuador.”
