Kaylene Kau's prosthetic arm is either a sweet modern update of the old-fashioned pirate's hook, or a terrifying device that will turn its wearer into a Cthuloid-human mongrel. I favor the former, if only because I want to sleep at night.

The prosthesis is not designed to be a prehensile limb, but instead it's an assistive appendage for the good arm. A simple motor drives two cables inside the tentacle, and the wearer controls it with a pair of switches on the upper section. Just put the "arm" in place, hit the switch and it curls around whatever you might want to carry. The other switch unfurls the arm.

It's not Dean Kamen's astonishing robot arm, but then it would also be a lot cheaper, and therefore available to many more people. And if a pirate were to swap this in for his current, eye-gouging hook setup, he'd certainly be keeping to an oceanic theme.

Kaylene Kau's Prosthetic Arm [Coroflot via the Design Blog]

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