A recent video posted to LiveLeak shows a man, who lost his right hand in a car accident last year, with a Touch Bionics i-limb ultra prosthetic hand.
In the video (around 0:15), the man explains how he uses a language of muscle movements in his residual limb to activate an array of pre-programmed hand and finger motions in the robotic prosthetic hand. This capability is possible through myoelectric prosthesis, a process that uses electrical sensors to detect tiny muscular movements in the limb, and then translates those movements into natural and intuitive movements.
The $100K i-limb has five individually-powered articulating digits, a fully rotatable thumb, and wrist — enabling the user to exercise a variety of complex grips and gestures.
Last year, the military research organization Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), developed a robotic prosthetic said to restore an element of "feeling" to an artificial limb.
“Upper extremity limb replacement has not really progressed since the days of Captain Hook,” Colonel Geoffrey Ling of DARPA's Defense Science department told Weill Cornell Medicine.