2021年经济学人 上海交大出世新型义肢（1）（在线收听）

Science & technology

科技板块

Prosthetics

义肢

A new prosthetic hand

一种新型假手

It gives users the sensation of touch, and is cheaper than alternatives, too

它能赋予使用者触感，而且比其它替代品便宜

Prosthetic limbs have been around for a long time.

假肢已经有很长的历史了。

The oldest known, a piece of wood carved and painted to replace the lost toe of an Egyptian noblewoman, dates back more than 3,000 years.

已经最古老的假肢可以追溯至3000多年前，是一块经过雕刻和涂漆的木头，用来代替一位埃及贵妇人失去的脚趾。

But prosthetics which behave like the real thing as well as looking like it are still very much a work in progress.

不过，外形和功能都像真肢体的假肢基本上仍在研发中。

And a group at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in China, have just come up with what looks to be a significant advance—an affordable prosthetic hand

不久前，中国上海交通大学的一个研究小组取得了一项重大进展，他们发明了一种造价低廉的假手，

that not only responds like a real one to signals from the wearer's brain, but is also able to signal back to the brain what it is touching and doing.

它不仅能像真手那样响应佩戴者的大脑发出的信号，还能向大脑发回有关它的动作和物品触感的信号。

Gu Guoying and his colleagues describe their invention in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

谷国迎和他的同事在《自然生物医学工程》上对他们的发明作出了描述。

Its fingers are made of rigid tubes connected by soft joints.

这只假手的手指由软关节连接的刚性管制成，

These are similarly connected to a 3D-printed plastic palm.

通过相似的方式连接到一个3D打印的塑料手掌上。

The whole is covered with a flexible elastomer layer to mimic skin and is attached to the user's residual limb via a customised plastic socket.

整只假手上覆盖着一层柔性弹性体，模拟皮肤，并通过定制的塑料接口连接到用户的残肢上。

In contrast to current models, which are electrically powered, Dr Gu's hand is powered pneumatically by a pump held in a waist bag, with the connecting air lines running under the user's clothes alongside communication cables.

与目前的电动假手不同，谷国迎的气动假手通过装在一个腰包里的气泵驱动，连接气泵与假手的充气线和通讯电线藏在使用者的衣服里面。

This reduces its weight below 300 grams—half that of some current models, and less, indeed, than the weight of a real hand—though the waist bag adds a further 444 grams.

这使假手的重量减少到了300克以下，重量只有目前一些型号的一半，实际上比真手还要轻。不过，装有气泵的腰袋还有444克的重量。