So many iconic characters in science fiction and comics have bionic limbs — from the Winter Soldier to Luke Skywalker and Imperator Furiosa.
But what if bionic limbs existed outside of science fiction? They do.
San Diego-based tech company PSYONIC has created a touch-sensing bionic prosthetic hand that looks like it came straight from a comic strip.
It's called the Ability Hand.
What set it apart from most prosthetics is that it can provide tactile sensations to the user.
Made of carbon fiber and silicon, the hand is both lightweight and durable. PSYONIC CEO and founder Aadeel Akhtar said it has 32 grip configurations, giving users flexibility.
“It can even switch between different grips,” Akhtar said. “So if I open the hand twice, I can do a pinch. For example, if I'm at a rock concert — you know, you can rock on. And then our user favorite is the finger wave, where you can see all the fingers moving.”
Users control the Ability Hand with their muscles. Sensors in the fingertips relay touch and pressure information back to them, allowing for delicate tasks like cracking an egg or feeding a baby.
Akhtar and a several users of the Ability Hand will be at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday, demonstrating the device and speaking on a panel about living with a bionic limb.
PSYONIC’s origin story
Akhtar said he first began thinking about prosthetics when he was 7 years old during a trip to Pakistan, where his parents are from. He remembers seeing a girl about his age who was missing a leg.
“That's the first time I met someone with a limb difference. She was my age, missing her right leg and using a tree branch as a crutch,” he said. “So it inspired me to go into this field, and it inspired me to create a company called PSYONIC that develops advanced bionic limbs that are affordable for both humans and robots.”
Fast forward to the summer of 2014. While working on his Ph.D., Akhtar traveled to Quito, Ecuador, with the nonprofit Range of Motion Project, which provides high-quality prosthetic care to underserved communities. There, he met Juan Suquillo, an Ecuadorian man who had lost his arm in a landmine explosion.
Akhtar and his colleagues worked with Suquillo for two weeks, fitting him with an early version of what would become the Ability Hand.
“Juan was able to make a pinch with his left hand for the first time in 35 years. And the hand, at the time, it was three times the size of an average adult human hand,” Akhtar said. “It had wires going everywhere, plugging into breadboards, power supplies, the wall. But despite that, Juan said in front of international news stations, that he felt as though a part of him had come back.”
That was the moment Akhtar knew he had to continue.
“If we want everyone to feel the exact same way that Juan did, we had to commercialize the technology. And that's when PSYONIC was born,” he said.
Today, PSYONIC has around 150 Ability Hand users and has deployed the technology to about 50 robots, according to Akhtar.
Coming to a panel near you
This marks the third year PSYONIC has hosted a panel at San Diego Comic-Con.
Attendees can learn more about what it's like to live with a bionic limb — and how the Ability Hand actually works — from six users and Akhtar.
“A lot of people don't know how they actually work in real life and how functional they are for people with limb differences,” Akhtar said. “And so we kind of wanted to show the world, 'Hey, this is how cool bionic limbs are in real life.' They're real. And this is what our users can do with it. These are their challenges. These are their limitations. But these are also some of the amazing things that they can do.”
The panel will also look ahead to the future of bionic technology.
"Seeing a bionic hand in real life, I think, is pretty compelling in and of itself,” Akhtar said. “It's kind of like science fiction coming to reality, right? That's one of the things that is so special about our panel is that you really get to see what the world is really like when it comes to this kind of technology and the future of it.”
The PSYONIC panel is Thursday, July 24, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 24ABC.
