A team of researchers in South Korea has developed a groundbreaking ultra-light robotic prosthetic hand that makes it easier and more natural for amputees to perform everyday tasks.
The new design combines precision and adaptability while remaining lightweight and easy to control, potentially offering a major boost to the accessibility and performance of prosthetic hands.
Led by Senior Researcher Dr. Minki Sin at the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM), the team created a robotic hand that uses only simple motion commands to achieve complex actions.
This innovation allows users to grip a variety of objects securely and naturally—whether using precise fingertip movements or full-hand adaptive grips—without needing to give detailed, difficult-to-generate commands.
One of the key innovations lies in the hand’s thumb design.
Traditionally, enabling full thumb movement requires either extra motors—which add weight—or passive joints, which reduce control.
This new prosthetic hand, however, can move the thumb in two directions (side-to-side and bending) using just one actuator.
This is made possible by a clever mechanical solution inspired by the Geneva mechanism, which splits motion into timed phases. As a result, users can control multiple thumb movements using a single, simple signal.
The hand also features a hybrid mechanism that blends two existing technologies: the stability of a four-bar linkage system and the flexibility of wire-driven systems.
While each system has strengths and weaknesses, the hybrid design combines their advantages. This allows the hand to maintain strong grip stability while also adjusting to the shape of the object it’s holding, improving comfort, efficiency, and usability.
The development has already been tested with real users and shown to provide both secure and energy-efficient performance.
Because it uses fewer actuators and less material, the design is also lighter, which helps reduce physical strain on the wearer and increases battery life—important features for everyday use.
The KIMM team has filed patents for their key innovations and is now working toward commercialization, with hopes that the technology will soon reach the hands of people who need it most.
Dr. Sin also noted that this technology could benefit more than just prosthetic users. The same mechanisms could be applied to humanoid robots, making them more responsive while using less energy and computing power.
With this breakthrough, the team hopes to make robotic hands more intuitive and accessible for amputees, improving quality of life and helping users regain the ability to perform daily activities with confidence and ease.
