PSYONIC releases Ability Hand for research users
The bionic hand is already being used at Facebook, NASA, and Apptronik and is part of two ANA Avatar XPRIZE finalists.
Image from the Austin American-Statesman.
PSYONIC announced that it is releasing the Ability Hand for use by robotics researchers worldwide. The hand was designed as a prosthesis for people with upper-limb difference, and it is the fastest and first multi-touch sensitive hand on the market.
Early research clients for the Ability Hand include Meta (Facebook’s parent company), NASA, Apptronik, and Sanctuary AI. From hospitals to the metaverse, from manufacturing plants to outer space, the hand has incredible potential beyond prosthetics.
“We optimized the Ability Hand to do human tasks, of course. And many research teams that are building robots that do what used to be human tasks by mimicking the body and how it works. Such strong and early interest from research labs tells us the Ability Hand is a perfect fit for robots,” said Dr. Aadeel Akhtar, PSYONIC’s CEO.
PSYONIC is currently running an equity crowdfunding campaign. Interested investors can find out more on StartEngine.
The Ability Hand’s API enables torque, velocity, and position control of the 6 brushless DC motors, as well as streaming of all 6 encoder values and 30 touch sensor values over Bluetooth or USB protocols. Teams can find more technical specs on GitHub and in the hand’s Interface Control Document.
“With our recent growth and move to San Diego, we are now in a position to expand availability of the Ability Hand for research to teams around the world. We appreciate the labs that have helped us get this far, and we’re excited to grow our role in the robotics industry.”
Two teams that are finalists in the ANA Avatar XPRIZE, a $10 million global competition to develop a physical robotic avatar system, are using the Ability Hand (AVATRINA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and VRotors, as well as i-Botics from the TNO, the University of Twente, and ETH Zurich). The finals testing event for the prize will be held later this week in Long Beach, California.
The Ability Hand is also being used in research labs at Georgia Tech, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, ETH Zurich, and the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab, which has been the number one rehabilitation hospital in the United States for decades.
"The Ability Hand's anthropomorphic form factor with robust and feature-rich hardware offers an exciting and unique potential to use it as a platform for research in robot learning and dexterous manipulation," said Mustafa Mukadam, PhD, a research scientist who is working with the Ability Hand at Meta.
Meanwhile, Levi Hargrove, PhD, director of the Center for Bionic Medicine, Shirley Ryan Ability Lab said "The Ability Hand is an extremely capable device, even for our most advanced research studies. The PSYONIC team is responsive to our feedback, which makes it very easy to use with our intuitive and personalized control systems."
PSYONIC is a bionic technology company based in San Diego. Leveraging proprietary bionic breakthroughs, PSYONIC’s Ability Hand offers those with limb differences the high-performance solution they deserve. The Ability Hand is the fastest and only multi-touch sensitive bionic hand on the market. Launched nationally in 2021, PSYONIC’s Ability HandTM was called the “world’s most badass prosthetic” by Popular Mechanics and a “miracle in the works” by CNBC earlier this year. With it, users can feel sensation from multiple areas of their bionic fingers when they touch an object.
PSYONIC was founded by Dr. Aadeel Akhtar, who was named one of MIT Technology Review’s top 35 Innovators Under 35 and America’s Top 50 Disruptors in Newsweek in 2021.