at the john's hopkins applied physics lab, they are developing bionic limbs even more advanced than mine. costing upwards of $120 million to develop, the modular prosthetic limb or mpl, is state of the art. i'm really excited about today, because we get to see the mpl hand system, which is something i've wanted to see for almost a decade. i think i've dreamt about seeing this hand. engineer robert armiger is combining robotics, neuroscience and artificial intelligence to make devices that will change lives around the world. it's here in real life! - [robert] that's right. - unlike my prosthetic arm, the npl is designed to be upgradeable and it can be customized. it's also more dextrous. - we've really tried to build in to this hand, all of the movements of the human hand. so see that each of the fingers, has basically the abity to separate or sead the fingers here. these two are coled together, this one moves independently. it's fixed. all the fingers have a drive that flexes each finger, and then they've got this mechanism that allows 'em to passively curl around an object as well. - th