Hans von Holst, a neurosurgeon at Karolinska Hospital, wanted a product that could enhance existing strength. He wanted to help his patients, that had some mobility in the arm and hand, to make use of the function they had left.

Combining robotics and medical expertise

Jan Wikander, professor in Mechatronics at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), had for a long time worked with robots of various kinds. Among these was a robotic hand. Hans and Jan saw the opportunity to use the same robotic technology and turn it into a bionic glove with the possibility to strengthen the human grasp. The idea was to create a glove that can prevent stress injuries, can be used in rehabilitation and provide support to people during their daily activities at home or at work.

The idea was presented to Johan Ingvast, PhD, who started to turn the vision into a product starting in May 2006. As a result, they founded Bioservo Technologies. Until today Hans is still an active contributor to the company holding a position in the Board of Directors. Thanks to this background we combine the best of two worlds: medical expertise with modern robotic technology to create innovative bionic, grasp strengthening products for people with reduced muscle strength or in need of extra power.

Our first commercial product was the SEM Glove^™ (predecessor to Carbonhand^®) which provided extra force and endurance to people with a weak hand grip. The SEM^™ technology concept ventures significantly beyond other state-of-the-art devices by introducing a technology that follows the user`s actions in an intuitive way and enhances the grasping force only if the human initiates a grasp.

Our latest product, the Ironhand system, strengthens the human grip, allowing industry workers to use less grip force when performing repetitive tasks. Less force used reduces fatigue, prevent strain injuries and reduces the number of sick leave as well as costs associated with it.

The Ironhand system is the world’s first active soft exoskeleton for the hand, designed to improve the health for workers that perform grasp intensive, repetitive and static work tasks.

Ironhand 2.0 - Keeping workers Strong, Healthy and Efficient - Video