A helping hand

摘要

Press your ear against your biceps, bend your arm and listen. The gurgling murmurs you can hear, made by muscle fibres as they move against each other, could provide a way for people to control prosthetic hands more easily. In a lab at Imperial College London, PhD student Sam Wilson straps two matchbox-sized listening devices to my arm just below the elbow. I clench my hand and the robotic hand resting on the table makes a fist. I try using it to grab a soft cube. It escapes the hand's grip on my first few attempts, but with a bit of practice it's easy.