Making sense of artificial hands

A review of sensors for artificial hands is presented in terms of their range, specifications and characteristics. There is a growing need for sensors due to the development of prosthetic hands that have multiple degrees of freedom requiring finger coordination into different postures. The sensing of force, position (angle), object-slip and temperature allows for the control of these hands automatically and frees the user from cognitive burden. To make the best possible use of individual sensing elements, future controllers will need to combine data from different types of sensor. They may also have an integral power supply using a small battery or harvest energy from their environment and transmit data wirelessly.