Nine years ago, Dennis Aabo Sørensen of Denmark lost the use of his left hand handling fireworks during a family holiday.
Now he has become the first amputee in the world to feel sensory-rich information, in real-time, with a prosthetic hand wired to nerves in his upper arm.
Silvestro Micera and a team at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and SSSA (Italy) developed the sensory feedback that allowed Sørensen to feel while handling objects.
A prototype of the bionic technology was tested in February 2013 during a clinical trial in Rome under the supervision of Paolo Maria Rossini at Gemelli Hospital (Italy). The study represents a collaboration called Lifehand 2 between several European universities and hospitals.