A prosthetic arm now in development by Johns Hopkins University and DEKA Research & Development will be as flexible and attractive as a real arm.

It will sense the weight and texture of objects, give the wearer a “feel” for what the arm is doing, and be able to make 22 independent motions, as opposed to the three in current prosthetic arms.

Scientists now building the DARPA arms are also experimenting with different sensor designs, including BIONs — rice-size glass-encased transmitters that could be injected into a muscle to pick up electrical signals from nerves — and electrode arrays that would be implanted at the ends of peripheral nerves, which run from the spinal cord through the body, sending signals from and to the brain.