Giving a Hand to a Real Bionic Man

In 1974, there was a futuristic television show called The Six Million Dollar Man. The popular show ran for four years and featured the adventures of astronaut, Steve Austin (Lee Majors). The show began with the astronaut near death but with science fiction and Hollywood creative thought readily available to provide an interesting story line.

The promotional trailer of The Six Million Dollar Man would provide the basis for the show. Followers of the television series will certainly remember the words: "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, we have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better. Stronger. Faster."

Of course, bionic limbs were only a distant dream in 1974. However, ten years before the premier of the Bionic Man on American television, early research for a bionic hand had already begun at Edinburgh's Princess Margaret Rose Hospital to help children affected by Thalidomide.

Many decades of research later, a recently released bionic hand has become in the words of Touch Bionics CEO Stuart Mead; "one of the most compelling devices in the world prosthetics market." The Touch Bionics synthetic limb is called the i-LIMB Hand and it has been winning awards all over the world throughout 2008.

Consider that the i-Limb Hand has won the Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award while Time Magazine has just recognized the device as one of the fifty best inventions of 2008. Time rated the invention fourteen out of the fifty chosen for its recognition.

The prosthetic hand has five separately working fingers, each powered by its own motor. This makes it more versatile than previous hands, which have often looked like hooks, limited to simple opening and closing movements. The bionic hand is made of high-strength plastics, and the fingers can easily be unscrewed from the hand, making it easy to service. As a result, this device has a much broader range of capabilities and use.

The i-Limb Hand has a grip for taking hold of narrow objects, and a power hold to control larger objects such as mugs. In addition, it features a precision grip, in which the index finger and thumb meet to pick up smaller things and hold them when performing finer control tasks. A grip in which the thumb and fingers close but the index finger remains extended makes it very easy to dial a phone.

However, this award winning bionic hand may soon be obsolete. Consider that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, (DARPA) continues to make progress on its $55-million project to create a thought-controlled bionic arm that duplicates the functions of a natural limb.

Last summer the DARPA team hit a critical milestone when it finished Proto 2, a thought- controlled mechanical arm complete with hand and articulated fingers that can perform 25 joint motions. This dexterity approaches that of a natural arm which can make 30 motions. The device can bend at the elbow, rotate its wrist and shoulder, and open and close its fingers. A person wearing a Proto 2 could even play the piano.

Next year DARPA plans to petition the Food and Drug Administration to put its thought- controlled bionic arm through clinical trials. This research is important to hundreds of disabled veterans returning from Iraq who have lost an arm or a hand in combat as well as thousands of other people in need of a bionic limbs worldwide.

Still, these advanced bionic limbs do not yet approach the capability seen in that 1970's television program. But modern science is getting very close to giving functional hands and arms to a real bionic man. As a result, those syndicated reruns of The Six Million Dollar Man as science fiction will never be the same. Television fantasy has met reality because progress in prosthetics is achieving international fame.