If you’ve ever struggled through the door laden with too many packages and wishing you had another set of hands, good news. Innovators out of Cambridge University in the U.K. have developed a controllable robotic extra thumb designed to boost the hand’s functioning.
It all sounds a bit complicated to maneuver, but researchers say adjusting to the wearable thumb is surprisingly quick and easy. In a, they detail what happened when they tested the device on a diverse group of subjects from toddlers to nonagenarians. Spoiler alert: Of 596 volunteers, 98% were able to successfully wear, operate and perform a task with the Third Thumb, which is made from a range of plastics, both rigid and flexible.
“It’s such an incredibly unique limb and such a challenging, and sometimes left behind, part of a prosthetic hand design,” Clode said.