1.52-year-old Michael Altheim was the first person in the world to get the device, called the Hero Gauntlet, outside of prototypes.

The new device has 3D-printed fingers which strap onto his palm and are controlled by Mr Altheim's wrist motion, enabling him to experience gripping and holding objects for the first time since his accident a decade ago.

Mr Altheim, from Frankfurt, Germany, said the "new hand works perfectly without delay".

"I previously had partial finger solutions, but the weight was really heavy, operation minimal and it wasn't waterproof," he said.

"I could maybe fold a towel and that was it ... When I slipped the Hero Gauntlet on and moved my joint and then my fingers went - I thought in amazement 'Oh yes, look there.'"

Mr Altheim said he was able to hold a shopping basket with the device and use his other hand to load groceries, but also planned to use it when out fishing, going on bike rides and doing DIY tasks.

2.A five-year-old boy born without a left hand is believed to have become the youngest in the world to receive a bionic hero arm.

Jordan’s life-changing Iron Man-style arm was an “instant confidence boost” for him, his mother Ashley Marotta said.

“As a mum, you just want your child to be happy, and he is generally happy and resilient, but after getting the Hero Arm he was on top of the world and glowing," Ms Marotta said.

The firm has fitted amputees with Hero Arms in Ukraine, Germany, and Australia.

“Initially we were told he was too young and we convinced Open Bionics to see us and luckily he picked it up right away,” she said.

“It was an instant confidence boost; the Hero Arm really makes him feel like a superhero and he is superhero obsessed.

“He then wanted to rush back to his school to show his teachers and friends.

“He could not have been happier or more excited and he’s the same today."

3. Karin, whose full name is not disclosed in the proof of concept study published Wednesday in the medical journal Science Robot, had been using a regular prosthetic hand for years, but it was hard to control. And as with even the most technologically advanced prosthetics on the market, it was uncomfortable and sometimes even painful to use. On top of that, the Swedish 50-year-old, who lost her hand in a farming accident, had been living with excruciating phantom limb pain for more than 20 years.

“It felt like I constantly had my hand in a meat grinder, which created a high level of stress and I had to take high doses of various painkillers,” Karin said in a news release from the group that made her new prosthesis possible. The engineers and doctors who did this work are a part of the Center for Bionics and Pain Research, a multidisciplinary collaboration between several international organizations. To relieve her pain and to gain function, she agreed to be a part of an experiment that would give her a bionic hand. The team says she is the first person in the world with a below-elbow amputation to successfully get a bionic hand directly connected to her neuromusculoskeletal system. Karin’s prosthesis is considered bionic because it is attached to her nervous system as well as to the muscle and bone, unlike a traditional prosthesis that attaches to the end of her stump through suction or a harness and cable system.

Although some other kinds of implants require external equipment, the bionic hand is completely self-contained. Surgeons embedded a controller, a wrist-shaped battery unit and a mechatronic coupler – a device used to transmit power – that connects to the neuromusculoskeletal interface, so she doesn’t need any additional equipment like a large battery or processing unit.

However, there wasn’t a lot of space in the area for everything to fit, so surgeons had to rearrange her muscle and nerves in what was left of her arm. They also eliminated the neuromas, the disorganized group of fibers that ball up at the end of a nerve when it is cut.

Dr. Max Ortiz Catalan, a co-author of the new study and head of neural prosthetics research at the Bionics Institute in Melbourne, Australia, said the neuromas are what can cause some of the phantom pain when people lose a limb.

To get the signals from the brain to the bionic hand to tell it what to do and to give it a sense of touch, doctors transferred a muscle graft from the woman’s leg to her arm so the nerves could reconnect to a natural target. Using the muscle also prevents the formation of new neuromas, Ortiz Catalan said.

Doctors then plant an electrode in that muscle, which works as a biological amplifier, boosting the electric signal from the brain into the hand, where AI algorithms inside the prosthesis interpret the signal and allow her to move the bionic hand. Because the nerves are engaged in this process, Karin also has a limited sense of touch through the bionic hand.

Now she’s able to hold and release objects with a wide variety of shapes, turn a door handle, pick up coins, prepare food, pack a suitcase and many more practical activities she couldn’t do well before. It’s worked for three years, a good sign that it has been well-integrated into her body, researchers say.