Researchers at the Rome-based Italian Institute of
Technology (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, IIT) and Italian Workers’
Compensation Authority (Istituto Nazionale per l’Assicurazione, INAIL)
prosthetic center have developed a prosthetic hand they say allows users
to grip objects with more precision and features a design that is less
expensive to produce than other myoelectric prostheses.
Called
the Hannes hand after Hannes Schmidl, the first technical director of
INAIL’s prosthesis center and a pioneer in myoelectric prosthetic
devices, the prosthesis has only one motor that controls all five
fingers, making it lighter, less expensive, and better able to adapt to
the shape of objects. IIT and INAIL expect to bring the device it to
market in Europe in 2019 with an approximate price of €10,000 ($11,900).
“This
can be considered low-cost because we reduce to the minimum the
mechanical complexity to achieve…a very effective grasp, and a very
effective behavior of the prosthesis,” Lorenzo De Michieli, PhD, told
the Associated Press in an interview May 10. “We maximized the
effectiveness of the prosthetics, and we minimized the mechanical
complexity.” De Michieli is the coordinator of the IIT INAIL Lab, a
joint technology transfer lab that develops prosthetic, orthotic, and
rehabilitation devices.
