A company called Youbionic, formed in 2014, began taking pre-orders for a robotic glove hand they had developed. Not so long ago a new, upgraded version of the device appeared, but the company’s specialists did not stop there, and another bizarre version was born, already with two robotic hands and wrists.
Both versions of the device, “one-armed” and “two-armed”, are controlled by bend sensors attached to the index and ring fingers of the human hand. Signals from these sensors are received by the Arduino controller, which generates a sequence of commands to control each of the six Actuonix actuators that provide the movements of each finger of the mechanical hand.
It should be noted that because of this simple control system, the number of actions a person can perform with this mechanical “appendage” is very limited. And without spending extra effort, the owner of a Double Hand can hardly play the piano “in three hands”, work on the computer keyboard and perform other delicate operations. And the mentioned extra effort that can make a mechanical hand to perform complex actions must consist in reprogramming the controller that controls the work of the hand, which is not within the power of every person.
All of the above suggests that the Double Hand device, in its original form, is unlikely to be used for anything useful. This raises doubts about the success of the Youbionic company’s idea, because the cost of mechanical hands, made of plastic on a three-dimensional printer, is quite high. The “one-armed” version will cost the potential owner 899 euros (1,080 U.S. dollars), and the “two-armed” one will cost 1,799 euros.
