Grasping The Artificial Hand Dextra

Remember the movie I, Robot? Do you recall how uber cool Will Smith’s mechanical arm was? If you don’t, this device might give you an idea what it looked like. Dextra, easily passable as perhaps the prototype of Smith’s robot hand, is a hand system designed by William Craelius of Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Considered lightyears ahead of current artificial hands, which offers very limited open-close functionability and speed, Dextra is extremely complex and effective. It records the muscle movements of the remaining parts of the arm, taking into account that muscle movements vary depending on the actual physical action. The gadget is then calibrated to suit the users mobility and voila, a complex movement of live muscles and tissues is copied mechanically. Dextra covers a lot of hand movements, even the “ability to type slowly or to play a piano piece. One person wanted to play the saxophone and, with three fingers, you can actually get quite musical with it” Dr. Craelius explained. The next step for the invention now is to pursue more complex human movements, like grasping a key, opening a door, holding a hammer etc. Dr. Craelius aims to publish a scientific journal about the breakthroughs he achieved with Dextra, later this year. If only Captain Hook could “hook” up with this one, I doubt Peter Pan would fly for long.

Remember the movie I, Robot? Do you recall how uber cool Will Smith’s mechanical arm was? If you don’t, this device might give you an idea what it looked like. Dextra, easily passable as perhaps the prototype of Smith’s robot hand, is a hand system designed by William Craelius of Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Considered lightyears ahead of current artificial hands, which offers very limited open-close functionability and speed, Dextra is extremely complex and effective. It records the muscle movements of the remaining parts of the arm, taking into account that muscle movements vary depending on the actual physical action. The gadget is then calibrated to suit the users mobility and voila, a complex movement of live muscles and tissues is copied mechanically. Dextra covers a lot of hand movements, even the “ability to type slowly or to play a piano piece. One person wanted to play the saxophone and, with three fingers, you can actually get quite musical with it” Dr. Craelius explained. The next step for the invention now is to pursue more complex human movements, like grasping a key, opening a door, holding a hammer etc. Dr. Craelius aims to publish a scientific journal about the breakthroughs he achieved with Dextra, later this year. If only Captain Hook could “hook” up with this one, I doubt Peter Pan would fly for long.