Bionic hand wins Dyson design prize

He started a crowd-funding campaign two years ago, which raised £44,000, and he used the proceeds to launch a business, Open Bionics. That’s super fast, given that current prosthetic models on the market take weeks or even months to develop.

Joel gets £2,000 for his win – which he intends to spend on a new 3D printer – and advances to the global stage of the competition, in which Dyson engineers whittle 100 entries from around the world down to just 20. A focus on both is what he feels will give his product a competitive advantage. “At the same time it is very lightweight and it can be customized for each person”.

Joel Gibbard, a robotics graduate from Plymouth University, has designed a prosthetic hand that can be produced in 40 hours; and with a price tag of less than £1,000, it is seen as an affordable alternative to more advanced robotic prosthetics, which can cost between £30,000 and £60,000. They’re hoping to be selling their inventions by next year.

So, how does this device work, and why is it so cheap in comparison to its potential competitors?

“We wanted to make low-priced bionic hands and a really good way to do that was through 3D printing and other 3D technologies like 3D scanning and 3D modelling”, Samantha Payne, chief operating officer at Open Bionics, told IBTimes UK earlier in 2015.

The biomimetic hand uses myoelectric signals to detect muscle movements via sensors stuck on the owner’s skin. It uses these to control their grip.

This allows for the user to pick up items as fragile as an egg without crushing it, despite the user of the prosthetic hand not being able to register how fragile it is.

Naturally, however, because of the decreased costs, there is also a compromise on design and engineering. Since then the design has changed ten times and now consists of just four separate parts. Many of these amputees struggle to adapt to their injury and current prosthetics have been proven to contribute to depression and anxiety. This, however, is still a ways down the road.