| Hakim Hayat |
UNIVERSITI Teknologi Brunei (UTB) students working on a research and development project of a 3D printed bionic hand received a funding boost from BR Nancy District’s We Care Fund to further help develop the project into its next phase.
Senior District Director of BR Nancy District Nurwajeemah binti Abdullah @ Nancy Kwang handed over the donation to Deputy Dean of UTB’s School of Computing & Informatics (SCI) Dr Mohammad Saiful bin Haji Omar who is also the lead researcher of the project at a handover ceremony at UTB yesterday.
The BND1,000 fund goes toward robotic prosthetic research project by UTB’s SCI students, which is developing a lightweight, low-cost 3D printed bionic hand.
The project also aimed to optimise its control to obtain acceptable usability in performing specific tasks by amputee patients. The UTB team has been conducting the research for the past 15 months.
To date, a prototype has been developed and the project is now at the clinical phase where the team will work with voluntary amputees to incorporate changes to the existing prototype to improve upon its usability.
This phase would involve several tests to be conducted including human-machine interface usability. This also includes classification accuracies to fine-control the hand to optimise performance of certain tasks by the amputee.
According to UTB, the donation is a valuable contribution for the project as it will help enable the team to acquire essential equipment for the next phase of the project.
