RP243 Sun-Powered Skin

 RP243 Sun-Powered Skin

Losing a hand is a terrible thing to happen to anyone, and though prosthetics are available, they are a far cry from the real thing. Even when you do get all the joints moving correctly, a prosthetic hand is still unable to feel, and feeling is incredibly important. Without the ability to feel, prosthetic hands aren't able to know how much pressure to put on an object. Try picking up an egg with a prosthetic hand and all you'll get is messy fingers.

Now, however, there is some hope. Electronic skin is being developed that will allow people with prosthetic hands to actually feel. The skin is made from graphene, a super material made of a one-atom thick sheet of carbon. It is one million times thinner than paper and incredibly strong. Graphene can not only conduct electricity; it is transparent, too. This means that manufacturers are able to place solar cells into the material and power the skin with sunlight.

Currently, however, there is no way to store this energy, so the skin does not work in the dark. But researchers are working hard to build flexible energy storage devices into the design in order to solve the problem. When the bugs are ironed out, the end result will be a prosthetic limb with skin that can touch, feel heat, and sense pressure, all without a heavy battery pack.

And it's not only amputees who will benefit from the invention. Robots, too, will now be able to feel and sense the environment just like humans can. This will vastly increase robots' functions, allowing them to have a much greater understanding of what they're reacting with. This, in turn, will result in robots making far fewer errors.

There is hope, then, that losing a limb need not be the tragedy it is today. With the help of technology, prosthetic limbs may end up as good as, or even better than, the real thing.