The Prosthetic Tentacle

By Dec 9th, 2010, 11:45 am

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When a designer named Kaylene Kau was challenged by a professor to design a prosthetic limb that pushed “the boundaries of current upper-limb prosthetic design,” she devised a tentacle-like prosthetic attachment that’s at once functional and slightly frightening.

Through extensive research I found that the prosthetic functioned as an assistant to the dominant functioning hand. The prosthetic needed to be both flexible and adjustable in order to accommodate a variety of different grips.

As diagrammed below, the tentacle is operated using a motor attached to a pair of cables; a set of controls allow the user to control the degree of curl “to hold a variety of different shaped objects.”