

Technology, developed by the US government, marks the first time that people have been able to feel through prosthetics




“We’ve completed the circuit,” said DARPA program manager Justin Sanchez in a statement. “Prosthetic limbs that can be controlled by thoughts are showing great promise, but without feedback from signals traveling back to the brain it can be difficult to achieve the level of control needed to perform precise movements.


The prosthetics work by running wires from the part of the brain that controls movement into the special hand, as part of a project by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the US Department of Defense.

The man was able to accurately report when his finger was being touched 100 per cent of the time, and said that it was as if his own hand was being touched.

“At one point, instead of pressing one finger, the team decided to press two without telling him,” said Sanchez, who oversees the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program, in a statement. “He responded in jest asking whether somebody was trying to play a trick on him. That is when we knew that the feelings he was perceiving through the robotic hand were near-natural.”