Bionic arms. How do amputees with bionic arms control the fingers and wrists to do things like picking up a cup and drinking so smoothly?

Question

This was asked a few years ago on here, but things have apparently improved a lot since then.

The top answer from before was describing a process that was a little cumbersome, but there’s videos of folks with new arms moving them and using their new hands much more smoothly than I would have thought possible using the older method described.

In: 100

Answer 1

There’s many different ways to achieve this. A common method is to attach electrodes to the stump on the muscles that are there. Amputees can still move their muscles and prosthetic technicians try to work with those remaining muscles to record specific signals that can be basically used as commands. Depending on the exact capabilities of the person and the nature of the amputation these signals may not exactly correspond to the original movements, or commands, they would use to move their limb but basically they just come up with a set of commands that control the limb. As technology progresses these recordings and the movements can become much more accurate and consistent.