Part of the $55m man

US boffins have been promised funding of up to $10.3m to help develop a bionic arm that would work, feel and look like a real limb.

The grant to the University of Utah is a key part of a US Department of Defense contract worth up to $55m to develop next-generation prosthetic arms for injured soldiers, and potentially for others whose arms have been amputated.

"Imagine an artificial arm that moves naturally in response to your thoughts, that allows you to feel both the outside world and your own movements, and that is as strong and graceful as an intact, biological limb," said bioengineer Greg Clark, the University of Utah's principal investigator on the project.

"That's what our researchers, teaming with others around the world, are setting out to achieve. People's arms and hands are not only tools, but an important means by which they explore the world and interact with others. We hope to restore that capability."

Researchers will focus on developing and testing an implanted "peripheral nerve interface" that would relay impulses from nerves in the residual limb to a small computer worn on a belt and then to the bionic arm.

This would allow a person to move the artificial limb like a real one, according to the researchers.

Sensors in the artificial arm would send signals to the computer and on to the interface device which would relay the signals to nerves in the remainder of the amputated arm and then to the brain, allowing the person to sense the arm's motion and location, and feel objects with the mechanical hand and fingers.

The neural interface between the arm and the subject would be implanted in what is left of the amputated arm or shoulder, and would send signals wirelessly to the artificial arm via the belt-pack computer.

The interface would use a modified Utah Electrode Array, a pill-sized device containing 100 tiny electrodes developed by Richard Normann, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Utah.

The research is part of the Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 project sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) designed to "revolutionise prosthetic devices for amputee soldiers".

Colonel Geoff Ling, a physician and programme manager for the Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 project, said: "Although our war fighters suffer fewer fatalities they still suffer horrible injuries, one of the most devastating of which is the loss of a limb."

The Pentagon announced the project in February when it said it was awarding the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory $30.4m over two years, with optional additional funding that could bring the total to $54.8m over four years.

The laboratory is subcontracting tasks to 28 other universities, labs, hospitals and companies.