Experiment adds sense of touch to artificial hand

Experiment adds sense of touch to artificial hand

WASHINGTON (AP) — To feel what you touch – that’s the holy grail for artificial limbs. In a step toward that goal, European researchers created a robotic hand that let an amputee feel differences between a bottle, a baseball and a mandarin orange. The patient only got to experiment with the bulky prototype for a week, and it’s far from the bionics of science fiction movies. But the research released today is part of a major effort to create more lifelike, and usable, prosthetics.