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Health x technology: Making prosthetics feel natural for users – for a lifetime

Published: 7.10.2026

Traditional prosthetics often feel clunky but tomorrow’s hands could move intuitively with users, without a moment’s thought.

Human arm holding a black robotic hand with wires, against a light grey wall background — The prosthesis developed by researchers is protected by a flexible leather glove, making it more comfortable to grasp than a metal structure. Photo: Aalto University / Kira Vesikko.

The human hand is an extraordinarily versatile piece of nature's engineering. It can carry out a dextrous task like pulling a coin from a pocket, a hard task like changing a car tyre, or the gentle task of changing a baby's diaper. When we use a hand, we don’t consciously instruct it, we simply intend the action and the hand does it.

That's precisely the kind of relationship Professor Ivan Vujaklija at Aalto University wants to create between a person and a prosthesis. ‘I want the patient of the future not to have to think about working with their prosthesis, but to just do it,’ he says.

Communication not capability the bottleneck

What’s holding Vujaklija back is not the prosthetic hand itself. Today’s robotic hands are already remarkably capable. ‘We have fantastic state-of-the-art robotic systems, let’s be honest,’ he says. ‘But they’re not good prosthetics.’

The main challenge is that the wearer still can’t easily access all that capability. The challenge for Vujaklija and his team is not so much building a better robotic hand but building a better interface between the hand and the person controlling it.

Finding a better solution matters as people may now live much longer with their prosthetics than before. The number of amputees is growing, but the demographics are also changing.

People are living longer, and conditions such as diabetes are important causes of amputation, particularly later in life. At the other end of the age spectrum, conflicts like the war in Ukraine are leaving young people facing decades of life with prostheses.

‘We’re now supporting someone’s ability not just for 10 years,’ Vujaklija says, ‘but potentially for 30, 40, or 50 years.’

Prototype prosthetic hand and arm on a table, with orange clamp-like hand and loose red, blue and black wires. — The external part of the prosthesis is custom-made for each patient using a mold. The material is a skin-coloured plastic. Photo: Aalto University / Kira Vesikko.

How does a hand know what a person wants it to do?

A prosthetic hand isn't successful just because it can mechanically grasp something. Vujaklija wants its control to become so intuitive that the wearer can rely on it as if it was part of their own body. ‘It should help restore autonomy and self-confidence in the wearer rather than being a tool that merely gets them by,’ he explains.

With a below-elbow amputation, the hand may be gone, but the remaining muscles in the forearm can still contract when the person intends to move it. This is the basis of prosthetic control technology dating back to the 1950s.

Electrodes placed on the skin detect tiny electrical signals from those muscles and use them to control the prosthesis, with traditionally one signal opening the hand and another closing it.

‘Two signals are fine if all you want to do is open and close the hand,’ Vujaklija says. ‘But today’s prosthetic hands can do so much more, and accessing all those additional functions quickly is cumbersome.’

Bearded man in beige shirt sits in office, holding a small beige device with a blue cable — Professor Ivan Vujaklija demonstrates a device that controls a conventional prosthesis and features only two electrodes. Photo: Laurel Colless.

From listening to the muscles signals to decoding them

One solution has been to listen to more of the muscle. More advanced commercial systems have moved beyond two electrodes to roughly 8–12, using algorithms to recognise patterns associated with different intended movements, such as opening, closing, pointing or rotating the hand.

However, this only captures a small part of what is happening in a very complicated biological system. Muscle activity isn't neatly repeatable: even when performing the same task, the patterns of electrical activity recorded from the muscles can vary.

Man in beige shirt indoors holding perforated white and orange flexible circuit board with three connectors — Vujaklija’s research group is now using a high-density electrode grid, which allows researchers to obtain significantly more detailed information about muscle activity. Photo: Laurel Colless.

‘Even writing with a pen,’ Vujaklija explains, ‘involves shifting patterns of muscle activity as muscles fatigue and the body adapts.’ The problem, as he saw it, wasn’t that the algorithms weren't clever enough, but that the researchers weren't giving them rich enough information to work with.

‘We were effectively choke-holding the AI by limiting the information we gave it,’ Vujaklija recalls. ‘It was only seeing the tip of the iceberg.’

Conventional systems capture the combined electrical activity of the muscle, but much of the detail within that activity remains hidden. From 2 to 8-12, his research setup is now using a dense grid of around 200 electrodes that can be wrapped around a forearm.

‘That gives us a much richer picture of what's happening inside the muscles. And the goal isn't just more electrodes equal more commands. That's too simple,’ he says.

Now, with much more detailed information to work with, he and his team can start picking apart the jumble of muscle activity to reveal when individual motor neurons in the spinal cord are firing to control the muscles.

Robotic and prosthetic hands on a table with circuit boards, cables and connectors for testing — In advanced prostheses, electrodes transmit muscle impulses to algorithms that recognise and interpret them, linking them to various movements such as opening, closing, pointing, or rotating the hand. Photo: Aalto University / Kira Vesikko.

Going beyond the laboratory to everyday life

The research is showing what may be possible. One of the next challenges is to make the technology reliable, affordable and compact enough to work in a prosthesis outside the laboratory. And to achieve this, Vujaklija says Aalto is absolutely the right place to be.

‘Here, we’ve got access to very high-grade technology, and also colleagues with deep expertise in neuroscience and engineering. We can try, test, fail, iterate and answer those fundamental questions together.’

Person fitting a tan prosthetic hand onto an orange robotic arm at a workbench — The mechanical parts of the prosthesis are concealed within a custom-made shell. Photo: Aalto University / Kira Vesikko.

Aalto’s collaboration with Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) as well as industry partners also provide pathways for the team to take their work gradually towards everyday use. And as for when it might reach patients, Vujaklija can’t be pinned down:

‘The me of five years ago would probably have said it would take another decade to reach clinical trials. But things are moving so quickly now, particularly with AI, that I think we could get there much sooner.’

Parts of prosthetic hands and electronics laid out on a light surface for assembly — The goal is for the patient of the future not to have to consciously think about using the prosthetic hand, but simply to use it. Photo: Aalto University / Kira Vesikko.

Text: Laurel Colless.

The prosthesis developed by Professor Ivan Vujaklija’s research group is on display at Aalto University’s Designs for a Cooler Planet exhibition in the Marsio building on the Otaniemi campus until 30 October 2026.