Our hand dey do plenty wahala every day – fit artificial intelligence help robots match dis wonderful human hands? Human hand no be small thing o, e get more than 30 muscles, 27 joints and plenty ligaments wey make am sabi many moves. E dey full with over 17,000 touch receptors and nerve endings for the palm alone. Dis things make our hands fit do plenty complex tasks with different movements. But no be Sarah de Lagarde we go tell all dis one. In August 2022, she dey on top the world. She just climb Mount Kilimanjaro with her husband and she dey fit like champion. But just one month later, she find herself for hospital bed, with serious injuries. As she dey come back from work, De Lagarde slip and fall between train and platform for High Barnet station for London. Train crush am and she lose her right arm below shoulder and part of her right leg. After long healing, UK National Health Service give her prosthetic arm, but e no really fit do normal hand moves. E look more fine than e work. “E no really look like real arm,” she talk. “My children say e dey creepy.” The prosthetic just get one joint for elbow and the hand be like static mass for the end. For nine months, she dey struggle to do the things wey she dey do before, but then she get something wey change everything – battery-powered bionic arm wey use AI to sabi the movements wey she want by detecting small electric signals from her muscles. “Every time I make movement, e dey learn,” De Lagarde talk. “The machine dey learn to recognize the patterns and eventually e go…”
