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Improving child prostheses, and rehabilitation of peripheral nerve injuries, using movement science

- Ken Valyear [PI], Simon Watt (Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÒÅÆ×ÊÁÏ) and Ambionics (CEO and founder, Ben Ryan)

Valyear and Watt have won a Sêr Cymru Enhancing Competitiveness Infrastructure Award to develop upper-limb prostheses for young children that work better and are easier to use.

Valyear and Watt are combining their expertise in movement science with a social enterprise developer of innovative individualised upper-limb prostheses for young children (www.ambionics.co.uk). The work addresses a major ‘roadblock’ particularly in developing prostheses for children, which is a lack of knowledge about natural, everyday hand and prosthesis movements - as opposed to the typical constraints of laboratory studies. An important objective will be to identify the basic sensorimotor principles that make prostheses intuitive for children, and use these principles to develop better prostheses partnership with Ambionics’ and their UK users. New designs will then be evaluated in real-world use, in the UK and abroad.

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