Prosthetic limbs are nothing new, just ask Captain Hook. However, as you might guess, users of these devices don’t have a connection to the device in terms of feeling on sensitivity. A team at the University of Alberta are fixing all that. The bionic arm uses a series of vibrations and “sensory illusion” to give the user the ability to know where the limb is in space and what is going on with it and all of this has been done with even the users wearing blindfolds and noise-cancelling headphones. They can actually feel the limbs positional movement through a series of vibrations known as “vibration-induced kinesthetic illusion.”



The new device restores kinesthesia using a seriously clever body hack. When you vibrate a tendon at 70 to 115 Hz, it makes it feel like the associated joint is moving. The illusion is strong enough that the person thinks their limbs are contorted into impossible positions or that their nose is growing like Pinocchio’s. By vibrating multiple tendons, scientists can induce the sensation of complex arm movements in space without anything physically moving.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – New Bionic Arm that Tracks Movement Feelings