Although Luke Skywalker makes only a cameo appearance in the latest Star Wars® film, his reappearance is also awakening interest in a prosthetic limb nicknamed for the fictional hero with a cybernetic hand. (Fans will recall that the bionic appendage replaced Luke’s right hand, which he lost in a lightsaber duel with Darth Vader in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back*.)
The DEKA Arm. Photo by DEKA Research and Development Corp. Used with permission. The DEKA Arm—which its inventor, Dean Kamen , affectionately calls “Luke”—is a real device created by the engineering minds at Kamen’s New Hampshire–based company, DEKA Research and Development. Luke, the most advanced prosthetic arm yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), translates signals from muscles in order to perform complex tasks, such as flexing fingers and grasping objects.
