Abstract: Commercially available bionic limbs have been far behind the state-of-the-art research that has been developed at academic institutions around the world. PSYONIC’s Ability Hand was developed to take advances in soft robotics and sensorimotor prostheses and make them available and accessible to people with upper limb amputations in the US and abroad. The Ability Hand is a multiarticulated bionic hand that is the fastest on the market, robust to impacts, and gives users touch feedback. It is also covered by Medicare in the US. This talk will detail the development of the Ability Hand, its current capabilities, and further advancements in bionic limbs that will be coming in the near future.

Bio: Dr. Aadeel Akhtar is the CEO and Founder of PSYONIC, a company developing advanced bionic limbs that are accessible to all people with limb differences. Dr. Akhtar received his PhD in Neuroscience and MS in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016. He received an MS in Computer Science in 2008 and BS in Biology in 2007 at Loyola University Chicago. In 2021, he was named as one of MIT Technology Review’s top 35 Innovators Under 35 and America’s Top 50 Disruptors in Newsweek.