Vikram Pandit looks to the right while reaching out to pick up a red plastic cup on the table to his left. He grasps the cup, and promptly crushes it. “Oops,” says Pandit, grinning sheepishly. The young, dark-haired college junior is not good at handling objects without looking. He was born without a left hand and relies on a prosthesis on that side of his body.
Pandit’s prosthetic hand—a motorized robotic gripper with a silicone glove matched to his skin tone—operates via electrodes attached to his forearm that pick up signals from his muscles. The hand enables Pandit to do many things, but handling fragile objects is not one of them. Once the hand receives a signal to close, it will continue to close unless Pandit consciously wills it to stop. This is because, unlike those of a natural hand, the fingers neither feel the pressure of the cup’s plastic ...
