Bionic Fingers

Bionic Fingers

Bionic fingers are a newly launched robotic device which helps patients that have fingers missing from their hands. The device is also called as ProDigits, that helps the patients point, touch, bend, pick-up and perform all the natural actions like that of a natural hand. This robotic device is of great help and makes everyday tasks so much easier and convenient. They are controlled by a special algorithm with two digits which help them to be in sync with the other fingers on the hand, just like a real finger. They move as natural fingers making it difficult to differentiate between the real and bionic fingers. The bionic digits controlled by an algorithm have two basic movement patterns, the first one is getting the fingers together and the second would be twisting of fingers inwards. With the use of such gestures, the bionic fingers help the users perform tasks with a single hand that one may require to do with two hands.

These custom made fingers are for those people with a partial hand, where fingers are absent either due to amputation or congenital anomalies. These bionic fingers are mechanically powered fingers that are controlled by the measurement of electronic signals from the nerves by making use of pads on the skin. About thirty patients have been fitted with ProDigits, each distinctly built to respond to the different levels of amputation. The ProDigits are designed a way that they can easily be able to detect objects as they are close to crushing something fragile and can be installed with various grips to help different jobs like typing. These bionic fingers cannot handle more than one kind of input- electrical signals from the skin, directly connected wires to the skin or pressure sensitive pads.

The ProDigits can handle pressure sensitive pads and electrical signals from the skin, however Touch Bionics are working on making the third input i.e. directly connected wires to the skin to work with the bionic fingers. The nerve impulses through the skin are measured with the help of Myo-electric sensors. When you come right down to it, the nervous system of the amputee still manages to send commands to the limb that is missing and with the help of the myo-electric sensors  these commands can still be detected and passed on to the artificial fingers in order to make them work accordingly. Every patient undergoes a different amputation as every prosthesis is different from the other and getting these bionic fingers to correspond to the myo-electrical sensors can get some tuning.

How do bionic fingers work?

It is quiet impossible to have the new patients who recently got their bionic fingers to expect the same level of control as of those who have had their bionic fingers installed for quite sometime. The touch bionics does offer the patients with a software user feedback to help the new patients get the hang of using their bionic fingers and provide them with all the necessary information via a Bluetooth to the limb. However, it would be great if touch bionics took the messages to the headset of a phone than to the limb that would make things a lot easier. One of the finest and the most outstanding feature of these bionic fingers are that they can be matched to the rest of your body with the help of cosmetology.

A living skin or a life-like surface is made use of by touch bionics that will shape the fingers in such a way that they match the natural hand perfectly. It may even become difficult to find out which ones are your real fingers and which ones are bionic; the result is that natural and remarkable. It has been estimated by Touch bionics that there may be around fifty two thousand Europeans who are a perfect match for the bionic fingers or ProDigits; however, there may be about twelve perfect-match individuals throughout the world. Nevertheless, there are still a lot of bionic fingers in the making that may match various individuals. In the offing, every prosthesis will have a different price tag depending on what the patients are looking for and the form that they want, the I-limb charges up to 18,000 dollars (USD), which may be quite an expensive price for many people, especially at places where no insurance is provided for prosthesis and the United States is one of it. Nevertheless, we can only hope that the price of the prosthesis goes down as well, just like it does for cars, electronics and sensors. It may take quite sometime for it to happen, but in the end we may end up seeing a much more programmed prosthesis in use all around the world. Or maybe considering the fact that we cannot make out the difference between bionic fingers, we will continue not to notice them at all.