Among the several medical advancements and scientific wonders in the past decade that is believed to have the potential to elevate our standard of life and healthcare, bionic limb is one of the most promising ones. Just think of your next door neighbor, whose right hand has been amputated just a year before following an accident, now giving a classical guitar performance with the flair and suppleness of his right hand. You may think of such an outcome as miracle but actually they are no more. Yes, bionic limb is all about replacement of amputated limbs with near perfect maneuverability and performance as an organic limb. Until a few years before artificial limbs and limb replacement was very much akin to carrying a junk of steel and iron that can at best support your body better, but hardly with them one could think of delicate functions and maneuverability like playing piano or driving a car as with normal organic limb. Now bionic limb opened the possibility of letting go that heavy burden of leading a life as crippled. Let us see now what exactly this bionic limb is made of, how it functions and comes as a blessing to countless people who had to undergo amputation in some point of their life.
What is Bionics?
Bionic limb is the outcome of scientific research carried out in the field of engineering to put some biological principle to put into practice which is called bionics. Bionics can as well be described as the engineering field that mimics certain biological principle to use them in engineering equipment or technology. Bionic limb is the most prolific example of this field of scientific innovation and development. The organic methods and principles of our limbs are duplicated and put into use to make artificially engineered limbs that can work like normal limbs. That is how the bionic limb became at all possible.
How bionic limb works?
An instance concerning a recent bionic limb that is being dubbed as robotic hand would suffice to make us understand how this latest range of innovations actually works. John Hopkins University in Maryland recently came up with their most advanced and state of the art innovation on bionic limb. The robotic hand that it displays can understand brain signal and perfectly accomplish any delicate function and maneuverability as the normal arm. As the researchers put it boasting off their innovation, it is the most sophisticated bionic limb in the world with as much as 100 sensors, 17 motors, a tiny computer placed on the palm and 26 joints. What matters most is that it can perform all the movements of normal hand with delicate responsiveness and corresponding maneuverability. It can sense the brain's electrical impulses and in conformity with the other normal hand performs the desired function.
The future of bionic limbs
The new range of bionic limb has just set the trends and is only an indication of how far this mimicking technology to produce organic function with hi-tech engineering can advance. While bionic limbs of today offer flexibility, complex maneuverability and responsiveness as like the organic limbs, still the difference on feel and functional suppleness between the organic and the engineered one is huge. In regard to the future of this technology we can reasonably hope that the bionic limbs of future will continue to breach this difference and come closer to the look, feel, function and delicacy of normal organic limbs.
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