A FORMER Royal Marine from Horrabridge is more than happy to 'give a hand' to help further important groundbreaking medical research which could bring great benefits to the disabled.

Dominic Lovett, 24, who lives in Fillace Park, suffered life- changing injuries after an accident in Norway in 2008, while taking part in Arctic training exercises.

Diving head-first into the snow for fun turned to disaster, as underneath a thin layer of snow was solid ice, resulted in severe spinal damage.

It left him a tetraplegic, paralysed from the neck down, but as the recruiting slogan goes, 'Being a Royal Marine Commando is a state of mind' — and Dominic is a man who has definitely not lost his fighting spirit.

His determination has certainly impressed Professor Roland Burns, a specialist in control engineering in the application of artificial intelligence to medical devices.

His organisation, Advanced Control Research Ltd (ACR), is a University of Plymouth spin-off company that conducts research and development into all areas of intelligent and innovative control systems.

ACR, the winner of the iNets South West biomedical innovation award 2011, has developed advanced microcontrollers for upper limb prostheses. They use pattern recognition technology to discriminate between the 'shape' of different patterns, detected from sensors sited on the residual upper limb of an amputee patient.

Each system is trained to recognise the specific pattern of individual users, and signal strength is employed to provide proportional control of hand speed.

Professor Burns told the Times: 'We have undertaken some initial tests with Dominic.

'The sensor we use is usually placed on the forearm but with his particular circumstances, other sites were explored.

'It is anticipated that recognised signals from the sensors could be used to control an exo-skeleton mechanism attached to Dominic's hands.

'The results have been very encouraging, particularly as there appears to be no product on the market at the moment that will meet Dominic's requirements.'

Professor Burns said that Dominic was an ideal person to build a system for.

'He is very enthusiastic and so very positive.

'There are no guarantees of success with this work but Dominic has a clear objective of trying to live as normal a life as possible and we would like to help him to achieve that aim.'

Being tetraplegic doesn't stop Dominic having goals and ambitions.

He is set on doing a degree in psychology at Birmingham University and intends to move next year to the Midlands to live with his girlfriend Amam — a nurse he met when he was a patient at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham.

Dominic said: 'I'm happy to be a guinea pig.

'It's Roland's show and if any advances in the equipment he makes helps to improve my life, or that of other people in the future, then that would be amazing.'

At the moment Dominic's forearms and hands, through lack of muscle use, are slowly deteriorating but Professor Burns' work provides hope and encouragement to people such as the former Royal Marine.

In his specially adapted bungalow in Fillace Park Dominic has the support of a 24-hour, round the clock, care team but although he is grateful for their help, he aims in the future to live as much as an independent life as possible, hoping that advances in medical science will him improve his quality of life.

Although the research is still in development, Prof Burns' experiments show the signals captured and decoded from the slightest muscle flicker or twitch can be detected and translated into hand movement aided by the exo-skeleton.

Dominic said: 'If I can achieve 40% of movement in my upper body and have the use of my hand to be able to wash and dress myself and do all the basic functions then that would be a great achievement in itself.

'Some of the stuff he does is phenomenal.

'I asked Roland if you can make someone without limbs move, then why can't you do it for someone with limbs?' laughed Dominic with a big grin on his face.