"This was supposed to be the future. Where is my lightsabre? Where is my teleportation device? Where are my bionic eyes?"

The plea on a T-shirt from hip London fashion outfit Carbon 28 highlights the frustration that many have with science fiction. Star Wars and The Six-Million Dollar Man set the expectations for anyone growing up in the 1970s. But 30 years on, we’re still waiting.

Although according to a small Scottish company, the future is now only about four months away.

Touch Bionics, of Edinburgh, says that it has developed a bionic hand which is streets ahead of other prosthetics and it aims to supply it to patients this summer.

Rather than claw-like artificial limbs with basic grabbing abilities, the company says its i-LIMB hand, with separately powered fingers, can pick up a grape or hold a wine glass by the stem.

Other developers, such as Rutgers University in New Jersey, say that they have prosthetic hands that can allow a user to type or play the piano. The last year has seen a steady stream of announcements about bionic breakthroughs including an external electronic eye from Stanford University.

Fingertip precision

But Touch Bionics spokesman Phil Newman says that there are many announcements at the research and development level from universities and laboratories working on bionics. Few are ready for people to use in real life, he says and few look like the original body part.

"We have a joke internally, that we have the world’s first bionic arm – again," Mr Newman says.

Touch Bionics has aimed to copy the bone structure of the hand and after eight years of development and initial tests on patients has gained venture capital to take the product to market.

After a £500,000 injection from Archangels – the fourth investment from the firm – chief executive Stuart Mead says he hopes to see the product working in the field before the Autumn.

"It’s most important to get the product to market in the next four months," he says, to prove clinical utility.

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