The branches · Movement and body · could move a stage within 1 to 5 years
A prosthetic arm moves by thought and feeds back touch
An artificial hand that the wearer moves by intending to, through signals picked up from the nerves or muscles of the stump, and that sends touch back the other way: pressure on the fingertips becomes pulses on the nerves, and the person feels the object they are holding. The first people to use an arm both ways were reported in 2005, and the first with a dexterous hand working in real time in 2014. Hands that move by muscle signals are sold widely; the two-way kind, with touch fed into the nerves, has not left the trials.
What would count
A person with an amputated arm wears a prosthetic hand that they open and close by signals from their own nerves or muscles, and that delivers touch or pressure information back into their nerves (not a buzzer on the skin), so that they can tell the size or stiffness of an object without looking, in a peer-reviewed report.
Who settles it: Peer-reviewed reports of the fitted volunteers, and a regulator's approval record when a two-way hand is approved
Where it stands
First human. Reached on 1 December 2005, on the record of doi.org. Could move a stage within 1 to 5 years.
The last reading
Once a week every upgrade is read against the news, against what would count above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every reading of this upgrade is on this week's reading.
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16 October 2026 Nothing new
Nothing in the window. No regulator has approved a two-way prosthetic hand; the Florida International University system is under an investigational exemption, which allows a study and not sale, and the Cleveland Clinic's two-way arm report is from 2021.
Notes
The record is the 2005 Utah report of amputees with fine electrodes in the nerves of the stump who both moved a prosthetic arm and judged grip force and position through it without looking. The 2014 report of a Danish volunteer using a hand with nerve electrodes that fed back touch in real time is the first with a dexterous hand. Later in 2014 a Swedish group reported a bone-anchored arm with nerve and muscle electrodes used at home for over a year, and in 2020 the same group reported several people using such arms in daily life for years. Prosthetic hands with vibrating motors on the skin are sold commercially; the test here leaves them out on purpose, because the upgrade is touch restored to the nervous system, not a signal the person learns to read.