Loosing a hand means loosing one of the most important and useful parts of the body, and it leads to many difficulties in daily life. Since this is a very big problem, over the years many researches have taken place, many solutions have been examined and many devices have been developed. Most of these devices are amazing, but I see a lack in them, which is what has led me to the idea for this project. Many devices have been created in order to help the patient move the prosthesis or even grab and move things, but not many of them are focused on helping the patient feel the object, recognize what they are touching. If I had lost a hand, I would love to be able to feel whether something is hot or cold, rough or soft, heavy or light, etc. The lack I see in nowadays prosthesis is the haptic part of the prosthesis.

When somebody looses a hand, he or she looses way more than the ability of grabbing things, which is rather important, they also loose the ability to feel.

The haptic sense is called "muscle sense" or "propioception". I feel like this propioception is really important to improve patient's quality of life. The functionality of a prosthesis can be way higher if the patient is able to recognize an object without looking at it, not to talk about feeling its weight, which would help to lift heavier things. If patients could control the pressure they put in the object, they could avoid breaking fragile objects, and so on. As I see it, there are many things we could improve by adding this "muscle sense" to the prosthesis.

This is what motivated me from the very beginning, but when I dug in the market I got really surprised. Obviously I'm not the only or the first person to think about this but, although there are some investigations, you can't find many devices like this in the market. I already knew that this wasn't a common device, but I didn't expect it so hard to find anything like this already commercialized.

I'm determined to cover this need and help improving people with amputation's lives.