60 Minutes took a look at New Hampshire Inventor Dean Kamen’s latest invention, a prosthetic arm developed by his company, DEKA Research & Development, with a four-fingered hand with an opposable thumb.
MHT first wrote about the arm in 2007. DEKA created the prosthetic with help from Holliston-based Liberating Technologies Inc., and funding from DARPA’s $100 million Revolutionizing Prosthetics project.
The robotic arm is powered by a lithium battery and equipped with multiple microprocessors, sensors and haptics technology. The prosthetic is designed to move and function similar to a real arm and hand that can grasp bottles and lighter objects.
Users control the arm — which is designed to be able to curl weights of up to 20 pounds — with sensors in their shoes and a joystick they can either move with their shoulder muscles or remaining portions of their natural arm.
Last month, MIT researcher Hugh Herr — who lost both of his legs below the knee to frostbite at age 17 — landed $20 million for from General Catalyst and WFD Ventures for his startup iWalk, which is developing robotic ankle and foot prosthetics.
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