Hand

While technology is making strides in absorbing our eyes and ears in virtual worlds, it’s harder to engage senses like touch. Engineers have now developed WeTac, a thin, wearable electronic "skin" that provides tactile feedback to users in VR and AR.

Clone Robotics is going to impressive lengths to make sure its "intelligent androids" will have some of the most human-like hands in the business, and watching the way their hydraulic "muscles" move under a transparent skin is absolutely hypnotic.

When someone has been left paralyzed by a stroke or brain injury, much of their recovery involves physically guiding the affected limb though the lost motion, so their brain can relearn it. A new exoskeleton does exactly that for the hand.

It goes without saying that surgeons require a very delicate, precise touch. A new set of surgical training gloves were designed with that fact in mind, as they monitor their wearer's hand movements, and provide feedback on their technique.

While it is already possible to control computers via hand gestures, doing so typically involves using peripheral electronic devices. The Typealike system, however, brings such functionality to existing computers, no added electronics required.

When it comes to robotic hands, there are ones that can grasp tough items firmly, and ones that can grasp delicate items lightly. The experimental new gecko-inspired farmHand, however, is capable of doing both.

For people with coronary heart disease, regular monitoring of bloodstream cholesterol levels is essential – and it typically requires the drawing of blood samples. A new system, however, is claimed to provide the same data simply by imaging the skin of the hand.

While there are now a number of robotic hands that can grasp objects, it's usually impossible to change a grasped object's orientation within the hand without releasing it. A new robotic hand is able to do so, however, via its rolling fingers.

Robotic hands do show a lot of promise for various applications, but their mechanical complexity still limits their possible uses. A new air-powered hand is much simpler, but still dextrous enough to be utilized to play a video game.

A few years ago a designer named Dani Clode introduced the world to the Third Thumb, a robotic finger controlled using pressure sensors under one’s feet. Now neuroscientists are using the device to investigate how our brain's adapt to extra limbs.

There are already computer vision systems and sensor-equipped gloves that can detect a person's hand gestures. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have developed an alternative technology, however, that offers some key advantages.

When it comes to tracking the positions of a person's moving hand, sensor-equipped gloves are often used. An experimental new system, however, utilizes a wrist-mounted camera … which doesn't even "see" the user's fingers.