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Open Bionics

Open Bionics
Private company
Industry Medical devices, healthcare
Headquarters Bristol, United Kingdom
Key people
  • Joel Gibbard CEO
  • Samantha Payne COO
Products 3D printed bionic prosthetics
Website www.openbionics.com

Open Bionics, founded in 2014, is a UK based start-up company developing low-cost bionic hands. It is based inside the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, the largest robotics research centre in Europe.

Open Bionics creates advanced bionic hands for amputees using 3D scanning and 3D printing technology. Although the company is pre-sales they have released a number of user trial videos showing how their technology works.

Open Bionics have released designs for several of their prototypes with an open source license. The company encourages engineers and developers to contribute to the development of bionic hands by joining their developer community. These hands provide a research platform for robotics or a test platform for prosthetics research. Each hand has been designed to be easy to build and repair.

A 3D printed robotic hand developed by The Open Hand Project using desktop 3D printers.

Second version of the 3D printed robotic hand developed by Open Bionics using desktop 3D printers.

The latest version of Open Bionics' robotic hand. The Ada hand can be assembled in under one hour, takes 20 hours to print on a desktop 3D printer, and can be controlled via EMG sensors. The Ada hand has fingers that are individually actuated and controlled via muscle tensing. The hand has multiple grip modes including open / close, tripod, pinch, point, and power grip.

The company has released their design files and code on their website, Instructables,Thingiverse, and GitHub.

Open Bionics announced a royalty-free licensing deal with Disney in 2015 to create official Iron Man, Star Wars, and Disney Frozen bionic hands for young amputees. The company is yet to set a release date for these superhero inspired bionic hands, although the company has successfully trialled an Iron Man and a Star Wars bionic hand with two children.

Open Bionics has won multiple awards for engineering and innovation including:


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