Electronic Skin Allows User of Prosthetic Hand to Feel Pain

[snowyh]

Current prosthetic limbs aren’t yet capable of transmitting complex sensations like texture or pain to the user, but a recent breakthrough by scientists at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in which a synthetic layer of skin on an artificial hand transmitted feelings of pain directly to the user, takes us one step closer to that goal. JHU researchers developed a system called e-dermis—a skin-like layer that gives prosthetic limbs the capacity to perceive touch and pain. Pressure applied to the e-dermis is transmitted to the user’s brain via an electric nerve stimulator implanted in the arm above the prosthesis, allowing the system to emulate actual sensations. This study was published in Science Robotics; read the entire article here: gizmodo.com/electronic-skin-allows-user-of-prosthetic-hand-to-fee-1826965132

[cherylm]

That sounds almost like something out of a Sci-fy story, Helen! Also a very interesting debate over whether actual "pain" would be necessary to work as a warning system that the prosthesis might be in a dangerous situation. I'd tend to think that it might be more important for prosthetic hands...but I do know that it would be useful for me to have a foot that could "feel" when it was standing on something that might throw me off-balance!