PSYONIC

PSYONIC is an American bionics company that designs and manufactures the Ability Hand, a multi-articulating myoelectric prosthetic hand that is also sold as a dexterous end effector for robots. Founded in 2015 by neuroscientist and engineer Aadeel Akhtar, the company set out to make advanced upper-limb prostheses that are fast, durable, and affordable enough to reach amputees who cannot pay for high-end bionic limbs. The Ability Hand is widely described as the fastest commercially available bionic hand and the first with fingertip touch sensing that relays a sense of contact back to the wearer.^[1][2] Because the same hardware works on a person or on a machine, PSYONIC also markets the Ability Hand as a low-cost research dexterous hand, and it has become a common end effector in robotics and manipulation labs.^[16]

Scroll sideways for more →

History and founding

PSYONIC traces its origin to Aadeel Akhtar's graduate research on neuroprosthetics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Akhtar holds a bachelor's degree in biology (2007) and a master's in computer science (2008) from Loyola University Chicago, and he earned a PhD in neuroscience together with a master's in electrical and computer engineering from Illinois in 2016 through the university's Medical Scholars Program.^[2][4] His doctoral work, carried out with the Bretl Research Group at Illinois and the Center for Bionic Medicine at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago, focused on motor control and sensory feedback for upper-limb prostheses. A 2015 paper on real-time electrotactile force feedback from a low-cost pressure-sensor finger, presented at the IEEE World Haptics Conference, foreshadowed the touch-sensing approach that would later define the Ability Hand.^[6] This research emerged during the same period as the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) HAPTIX program, which from 2015 funded efforts to give prosthetic hands a natural sense of touch and movement, the broader field in which Akhtar trained.^[5]

Akhtar has said his motivation dates to a childhood trip to his parents' native Pakistan, where at age seven he met a girl his own age who was missing a leg and used a tree branch as a crutch. The encounter shaped a long-standing goal of making capable prostheses accessible to people who are normally priced out of them.^[1][11] He founded PSYONIC in 2015 while still a graduate student, initially in the Research Park at Champaign, Illinois, and iterated through roughly nine generations of the hand, starting with inexpensive 3D-printed prototypes.^[10] Early users kept breaking conventional prosthetic hands worth tens of thousands of dollars within months, which pushed the design toward impact resistance, speed, and reliability rather than low cost alone.^[8]

The company financed early development with crowdfunding and government research grants, including an Indiegogo campaign and Small Business Innovation Research grants from the National Science Foundation totaling about 1.4 million dollars in 2018 and 2019.^[7] The Ability Hand launched nationally in 2021, and PSYONIC subsequently relocated its headquarters to San Diego, California, where it operates its manufacturing and offices.^[7][11]

The Ability Hand

The Ability Hand is a five-fingered myoelectric prosthesis driven by six brushless DC motors: one motor flexes and extends each of the five fingers, and a sixth powers thumb rotation, giving the hand six actuated degrees of freedom.^[2][16] Each finger has three segments and is tendon-driven through a compliant transmission, so the fingers conform to irregular and deformable objects while the overall system remains a six-motor design. The thumb can also be repositioned by hand, which expands the range of usable grasps.

Speed and durability are the design's headline traits. PSYONIC reports that the fingers close in roughly 200 milliseconds, which the company says is about twice as fast as other bionic hands, and that individual fingers move at up to several hundred degrees per second.^[7][16] The hand weighs about 470 to 500 grams, close to the mass of an average adult hand and lighter than many competing devices.^[2][8] Its shell is made of carbon fiber, chosen to cut weight while adding stiffness and strength, and the fingers are overmolded in silicone rubber so they flex on impact instead of shattering.^[9][10] PSYONIC markets this toughness aggressively, publicizing demonstrations of users arm wrestling and taking blunt impacts with the hand, and the device is water resistant for everyday use.^[8][2] Published specifications list a power-grasp force on the order of 66 newtons and a maximum axial load near 36 kilograms (about 80 pounds), with the fingers capable of handling objects across a wide size range.^[16]

The hand offers up to 32 selectable grip patterns, including power, pinch, key, and tripod grasps as well as gestures, which the user configures and switches through a companion smartphone app over Bluetooth.^[1][2] The clinical prosthesis carries a list price around 15,500 US dollars, well below the 50,000 dollars or more charged for some premium multi-articulating hands; with insurance, PSYONIC has described typical out-of-pocket costs in the range of roughly 10,000 to 20,000 dollars.^[13][12] It is an FDA-registered medical device fitted for patients aged about 13 and older, and myoelectric hands in its class are reimbursed by Medicare and most private US insurers under durable medical equipment benefits.^[2][14]

Control and sensory feedback

Like other myoelectric prostheses, the Ability Hand is controlled by surface electrodes placed over the muscles of the residual limb. When the wearer contracts those muscles, the electromyography (EMG) signals are decoded into open, close, and grip-switching commands, so a person can drive the hand and toggle between preset grasps through muscle activity alone.^[2][3] Grips and control settings are customized in the mobile app, and the firmware can be updated over the air.

The feature that distinguishes the Ability Hand is closed-loop touch feedback. Pressure sensors in the thumb, index finger, and little finger detect contact and grip force, and the hand converts that information into vibrations delivered against the wearer's skin.^[1][3] The vibrations signal when the hand touches an object, how hard it is gripping, and when the object is released, giving amputees a rudimentary sense of touch that is missing from conventional prostheses. PSYONIC describes this as the first commercially sold bionic hand to provide such feedback, a capability that grew directly out of Akhtar's academic work on electrotactile and vibrotactile feedback.^[1][6] The company and academic collaborators, including groups at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, have also explored pairing the hand with implanted neural interfaces for more direct volitional control and sensation, research aligned with the goals of the DARPA HAPTIX program.^[3][5]

Use in robotics and research

Because the Ability Hand is compact, fast, and instrumented with touch sensors, PSYONIC sells it as a dexterous end effector for robots and manipulation research, positioning it as a lower-cost alternative to specialized research hands.^[16] The robotics version exposes an open application programming interface with position, velocity, and torque control, streams encoder and touch data, and communicates over standard interfaces such as BLE, I2C, UART, and RS485, with the datasheet and command protocol published publicly.^[16] Product listings have quoted robotics units at a fraction of the clinical price.^[16] The same design therefore appears in the notable-hands surveys of humanoid robot hands alongside devices such as the Inspire and Allegro hands.

Reported robotics users and collaborators include Apptronik, which integrated Ability Hands onto its Apollo humanoid robot and showed the combination in manipulation demonstrations; NASA, which has studied the hand on its Valkyrie humanoid for space-relevant manipulation such as operating consoles; and academic groups at the University of California, San Diego, where Akhtar is an adjunct professor, among others.^[17][18] The hand is frequently paired with data gloves for high-fidelity teleoperation and human demonstration collection.

In June 2026, PSYONIC announced a partnership with ABB Robotics to use data from human Ability Hand users to train robots for industrial manipulation. In the collaboration, tactile and motion data captured from prosthesis wearers, combined with camera feeds, is used to train vision-language-action models and world models on NVIDIA Isaac Lab and GR00T tooling, with the aim of teaching collaborative robots such as ABB's GoFa arm to grasp reliably in tasks like automotive pick-and-place, warehousing, and laboratory automation.^[14][15] The premise, stated by Akhtar, is that dexterous manipulation is as much a data problem as a hardware problem, and that a hand worn by people generates cleaner training data than teleoperation or video alone.^[14] PSYONIC has cited robotics research interest from companies including Meta, an early purchaser of the hand. (Separately, NVIDIA's own GR00T reference humanoid design uses hands from Sharpa rather than the Ability Hand, so PSYONIC's NVIDIA link is through the software and training stack, not the reference hardware.)

Reception, funding, and milestones

The Ability Hand drew broad coverage after its 2021 national launch, with Popular Mechanics calling it the world's most badass prosthetic and outlets highlighting its speed and touch feedback.^[7] Akhtar was named to MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2021 and to Newsweek's list of America's greatest disruptors.^[4]

PSYONIC's highest-profile moment came on the ABC series Shark Tank in early 2024 (season 15, episode 1516), where Akhtar sought 1 million dollars for 2 percent of the company. He left with a 1 million dollar deal for roughly 6 percent equity split among Kevin O'Leary, Daymond John, and Lori Greiner.^[13][12] At the time, the company reported annual revenue around 1 to 2 million dollars and more than 100 clinical users, and it ran an equity crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine alongside the appearance.^[13] Industry trackers later reported valuations near 65 million dollars in 2024. By 2026, PSYONIC said more than 300 patients were using the Ability Hand.^[14]

Scroll sideways for more →

Limitations

The Ability Hand shares the constraints of myoelectric prostheses generally. EMG control is coarser and less intuitive than a natural hand, grip switching through muscle signals takes practice, and the six-motor design offers fewer independent degrees of freedom than research hands with a dozen or more actuators. The touch feedback, while notable, conveys limited information (contact, force, and release) rather than the rich sensation of biological skin, and full restoration of natural touch remains a research goal tied to implanted neural interfaces. On the clinical side, even at a lower price than premium competitors the device still costs well over 10,000 dollars, so access depends heavily on insurance coverage and fitting by a prosthetist. As a robotics end effector, the hand is optimized for a human form factor and modest payloads rather than the highest grip forces or the largest actuation counts, and PSYONIC's higher-profile robotics engagements are so far research collaborations and pilots rather than disclosed high-volume supply agreements. Claims that it is the fastest or first touch-sensing bionic hand originate largely with the company; the underlying specifications are well documented, but the superlatives are marketing framing.

See also

• Bionic hand
• Dexterous hand
• Humanoid robot hands
• Tactile sensing
• Open Bionics
• COVVI
• Alt-Bionics
• Apptronik

References

1. PSYONIC, "Ability Hand (Humans)." https://www.psyonic.io/ability-hand ↩
2. Loyola University Chicago, "How a Loyola alum built the world's first touch-sensing bionic hand." https://news.luc.edu/stories/science-tech/how-a-loyola-alum-built-the-worlds-first-touch-sensing-bionic-hand/ ↩
3. IEEE Spectrum, "Bionic Hand Gives Amputees a Sense of Touch." https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-hand-simulates-touch ↩
4. University of Illinois Electrical and Computer Engineering, "Aadeel Akhtar, Young Alumni Achievement Award." https://ece.illinois.edu/alumni/awards/yaaa/20-Akhtar ↩
5. DARPA, "Hand Proprioception and Touch Interfaces (HAPTIX)." https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/hand-proprioception-and-touch-interfaces ↩
6. Aadeel Akhtar, "Publications" (World Haptics 2015, electrotactile force feedback). https://www.aadeelakhtar.com/publications ↩
7. Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Chicago, "Psyonic Racks Up Accolades as its Bionic Hand Prepares for Nationwide Launch." https://polsky.uchicago.edu/2021/08/20/psyonic-racks-of-accolades-as-its-bionic-hand-prepares-for-a-nationwide-launch/ ↩
8. Rehab Management, "PSYONIC Launches the Ability Hand, a Bionic Hand You Can Arm Wrestle With." https://rehabpub.com/orthotics-prosthetics/prosthetics/psyonic-launches-the-ability-hand-a-bionic-hand-you-can-arm-wrestle-with/ ↩
9. CompositesWorld, "Lighter, stronger, faster bionic hand aided by composites design." https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/lighter-stronger-faster-bionic-hand-aided-by-composites-design ↩
10. Formlabs, "Advanced Prosthetics Made Accessible: How PSYONIC Developed a Bionic Hand Using Additive Manufacturing." https://formlabs.com/blog/psyonic-advanced-prosthetics-additive/ ↩
11. San Diego Magazine, "SD Bionics Company Brings Sci-Fi to Life with New Prosthetics." https://sandiegomagazine.com/features/psyonic-bionic-prosthetic-hand-technology/ ↩
12. CNBC, "37-year-old built a $50 million bionic hand company and landed a $1 million Shark Tank offer." https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/28/shark-tank-how-prosthetics-startup-psyonic-landed-1-million-offer.html ↩
13. Shark Tank Blog, "Psyonic Shark Tank Update, Season 15." https://www.sharktankblog.com/business/psyonic/ ↩
14. The Robot Report, "PSYONIC partners with ABB Robotics to apply human touch to robot dexterity." https://www.therobotreport.com/psyonic-abb-robotics-partner-apply-human-touch-data-robot-dexterity/ ↩
15. MassRobotics, "PSYONIC partners with ABB Robotics to apply human touch to robot dexterity." https://www.massrobotics.org/psyonic-partners-with-abb-robotics-to-apply-human-touch-to-robot-dexterity/ ↩
16. PSYONIC, "Ability Hand for Robots." https://www.psyonic.io/robots ↩
17. PSYONIC, "Apptronik launches humanoid robot." https://www.psyonic.io/news/apptronik-launches-humanoid-robot ↩
18. Design News, "NASA's Valkyrie Robot Is Testing for Space Flight." https://www.designnews.com/automation/nasa-s-valkyrie-robot-is-testing-for-space-flight ↩