By: Adam Balkin
Juan Arredondo can pick up a plastic cup with his left hand without crushing it. That's a big deal for the 27-year-old retired U.S. Army Sergeant who lost his hand to a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2004.
He's among the very first veterans to be fitted with the iLimb, billed as the world's first bionic hand with independently moving fingers.
“Everything is meant for a hand to grab it. You go for a door and it's meant for your hand to grab it fully and wrap around that handle and grab it. [The iLimb] just provides a lot of natural feeling. I go for something and I’ll be like, ‘wow that's how I'd grab it with my right hand, so that's the biggest thing for me. It’s almost having my hand back,” Arredondo said.
That’s why Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics Inc., which fit Arrendondo with the hand, insists the Scottish-made device is much more than just an incremental improvement over previous models.
“Each finger moves independently, where every finger has a motor in it and the transmission. In the back, there's a computer that controls the whole thing. So what happens is, as the user makes a contraction, it sends a signal to that computer and then it grabs an object very naturally, just like you and I would. Previous hand designs were limited in how they grabbed objects, and so the user had to compensate, they couldn't use the prosthesis for all their activities. The old ones relied on using excessive force, and so. They crushed objects all the time,” Troy Farnsworth of Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics Inc. said.
There’s one downside to the hand. Like most high-tech devices, it can't get wet, but developers say they are working on a waterproof model.
Other than water though, it seems just about anything goes, from lifting a baby to lifting weights at the gym.
“It doesn't quite have as much power, but absolutely you could lock on and hold something. The limit is now going to be more the rest of the prosthesis. I don't think the hand is going to be the limit. So, for example, the way it fits to the patient might be the limiting factor,” Farnsworth said.
Arrendondo said he does workout with it and tries to test just how far it'll go, within reason. He does fear destroying his iLimb, however, which at close to $18,000, costs as much as two to three times that of other prosthetic hands.
They are working on a waterproof model.
Other than water though, it seems just about anything goes, from lifting a baby to lifting weights at the gym.
“It doesn't quite have as much power, but absolutely you could lock on and hold something. The limit is now going to be more the rest of the prosthesis. I don't think the hand is going to be the limit. So, for example, the way it fits to the patient might be the limiting factor,” Farnsworth said.
Arrendondo said he does workout with it and tries to test just how far it'll go, within reason. He does fear destroying his iLimb, however, which at close to $18,000, costs as much as two to three times that of other prosthetic hands.
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