A photo from open sources The British, created using a 3D printer prototype bionic prosthetic arm won a national award named after James Dyson. According to robots from Open Bionics “, based in Bristol, their project is able to provide people are an inexpensive alternative to existing ones dentures.
In this case, a robotic arm can be printed in just two days, while large corporations make similar products for weeks and sometimes even months.
According to Joel Gibbard, one of the authors of the project, calculate dimensions of an individual model can be done in minutes using equipped with special sensors tablet computer. Print details of the bionic arm takes forty hours, while bringing them together location is possible in just two hours. The British hope that already in next year they will be able to launch commercial production of such dentures. Devices will be functional, cheap, lightweight and outwardly attractive. The final model will be a kind of mechanical skeleton, covered with artificial skin.
The inventors suggest that the final price of the product will be one or two thousand pounds, that is, one hundred to two hundred thousand rubles, if you transfer to Russian money. Today for such an amount you can unless a cosmetic nonfunctional prosthesis. An artificial hand, allowing a person to move his fingers, stands in United Kingdom twenty to sixty thousand pounds. For most of the local people with disabilities, this cost is too much. high, not to mention children who need new dentures to produce periodically.
Developed by Open Bionics engineers, the device allows move a person’s fingers thanks to myoelectric signals. The skin sensors that the prosthesis is equipped with detect muscle contractions and use them to control the mechanical palm. Obviously, the user cannot feel the touch. artificial hands with various objects (some expensive dentures are already capable of this today), but the device has sensors for adjusting contact pressure.
3D prosthesis currently printed by the British on a 3D printer the hands are accessible only to those with disabilities who have a forearm. However, in the future, specialists intend to create bionic arm for patients with amputation above the elbow limb. For their innovation, representatives of “Open Bionics” got two thousand two hundred twenty two pounds – now they claim an international title with a prize of forty-five thousand american dollars.
Time
