The world's most advanced bionic hand has scooped a top engineering prize. The i-LIMB is a prosthetic device with five individually powered digits. It won this year's MacRobert award from The Royal Academy of Engineering. First developed in 1963 as part of a research programme to help children affected by Thalidomide, the i-LIMB looks and acts like a real human hand. It is commercially available through the inventors Touch Bionics. Using leading-edge electronic and mechanical techniques and manufactured with high-strength plastics, the light-weight hand is the first of a new generation of prosthetics. Ray Edwards is a quadruple amputee who had the i-LIMB hand fitted a month ago and says it has changed his life. Ray survived Hodgkins Disease only to have all four limbs amputated in 1987 after he developed septicaemia. He now runs a construction company customising houses for disabled people and is acting chair of the UK Limbless Association. "When I first looked down and saw the i-LIMB hand I just cried," says Ray. "i-LIMB has helped me more psychologically than physically. That was the first time in 21 years that I had seen a hand opening there - it made me feel I was just Ray again.

"You can do so much with technology but it's got to make the user happy - and i-LIMB does!" Touch Bionics leads the upper limb prosthetics market. The company's CEO Stuart Mead said: "The i-LIMB Hand is one of the most compelling devices in the world prosthetics market."

View: Full Article | Source: Daily Mail

Looks like our descendants a thousand years from now may be able to have their brains put into immortal bionic bodies at this rate.

I don't like the name iLimb. It sort of trivialises a serious issue into another accessory - I'm thinking along the lines of iTunes, iPod etc

It's not like you are going to get the two confussed. Think of the money they are going to make off that.

Well I can rest assured that if I lose my hand in a lightsaber fight against my sith-turned father, that it can be replaced!

WOW, that is wonderful! Think of all the kids coming back from war who can use that. It is really an improvement on the current technology for people who are in real need of it.

Does it work through muscle manipulation at the amputation site, or electronic impulses through the brain?

muscles manipulation at the amputation site. Usually, amputed people will have this "phatom feelings" that their arm are still there. Inserting the iLimb will cause them to feel they do have an arm and they can move it as they move a normal arm.

are you kidding ? I would be VERY surprised if it took another 100 years for that to happen. It's a common mistake for people to think of technology advancements in linear, rather then exponential, fashion...
I suggest you read something of Ray Kurzweil... ("Singularity is near" for example)

Although this would be a scientific breakthrough in its field, I don't think I will see technology of that caliber in my lifetime.

And how much money have iTunes and iPods made so far?