Italian scientists on Tuesday presented recently developed technology which allows a robot hand to be controlled by thought alone.
Thanks to sophisticated apparatus developed by the Neuromath team, a hand made of plastic, wire and metal can be made to open, clench into a fist and wave its thumb about.
The long-term goal of the project is to create a system which can give people who have lost a hand through an accident a useful, working replacement.
''The hand was designed to be attached to someone's arm,'' said Fabio Babiloni of the La Sapienza University in Rome, head of the project.
At present the system depends on a white 'electrocephalogram cap' which, when placed on the user's head, reads mental activity and sends appropriate signals to the robot hand.
The cap looks like a plastic colander covered with bunches of wires and Babiloni admits it is not exactly the sort of thing people will want to be seen wearing at the supermarket.
In fact neuroscientists, mathematicians and engineers in the Neuromath team are working to make the brain-reading apparatus ''invisible''.
The first step - getting rid of the wires - should take about five years, says Babiloni. The second - replacing the cap with tiny electrodes hidden in the user's hair - could be completed in another five years.
The project won lavish praise on Tuesday from Nobel prize-winning scientist Rita Levi Montalcini, who opened the conference at which the robot hand was presented.
The Neuromath project is an ''cutting edge'' study which confirms Italy's position as world leader in this sector, she said.
The thought-controlled hand was developed by the La Sapienza University and the Santa Lucia Foundation in Rome and by the Sant'Anna school in Pisa.
It can be seen in action by clicking on the 'Press release in English' hyperlink on the Neuromath website (www.neuromath.eu).
