How do prosthetic limbs work? Are they connected to your brain or something? How do you make them move?

Question

How do prosthetic limbs work? Are they connected to your brain or something? How do you make them move?

In: 9

Answer 1

I work for a company that makes myoelectric hands, so I can tell you a bit about those but I don’t know much about other types. We have two basically touch pads, one to send “open” signals and one to send “close” signals. These are mounted somewhere the person has enough control to be able to do press them with varying degrees of force and patterns (like rapid multi tap sort of patterns). How forcefully the sensor gets touched controls the speed of the motion.