Bionic Fiction Becomes Science Fact

[ramonmercado]

Bionic fiction becomes science fact



A highly dexterous, bio-inspired artificial hand and sensory system that could provide patients with active feeling, is being developed by a European project.

Funded by the Future and Emerging Technologies initiative of the IST programme, the CYBERHAND project aims to hard wire this hand into the nervous system, allowing sensory feedback from the hand to reach the brain, and instructions to come from the brain to control the hand, at least in part.

Coordinated by Professor Paolo Dario with Professor Maria Chiara Carrozza leading the development of the hand, the project united researchers from Germany, Spain, Italy and Denmark.

So far, the project is racking up an impressive list of achievements. It has a complete, fully sensitised five-fingered hand. The CYBERHAND prototype has 16 Degrees of Freedom (DoFs) made possible by the work of six tiny motors.

Each of the five fingers is articulated and has one motor dedicated to its joint flexing for autonomous control. It features that miracle of evolution, the opposable thumb, so the device can perform different grasping actions.

Taking inspiration from the real hand, where a muscle pulls a tendon inside a synovial sheath, CYBERHAND's finger cables run through a Teflon sheath pulled by a DC motor. So the proximal, medial and distal phalanges, those bones between your finger knuckles, are all driven by the same tendon. This approach is called underactuation as there are more Degrees of Freedom than Degrees of Movement (motors); it means the prosthesis has a self-adaptive grasp.

"This is a fundamental feature of the CYBERHAND prosthesis because only a limited number of control signals are available for user’s voluntary control," says project manager, Dr Lucia Beccai. Importantly, it also means less user effort is required to control the hand during daylong use.

The CYBERHAND prototype integrates the two types of human senses. One senses where parts of the body are relative to other parts, whether our fingers are open or closed, for example. The other relates to taste, touch, sound, hearing and sight that tell us about the external world. CYBERHAND includes sensors for tension, force, joint angle, end stroke and contact in the final prototype.

This prototype uses Longitudinal IntraFascicular Electrodes (LIFEs) to connect the hand to the nervous system. Within the CYBERHAND project, in addition to traditional wire LIFEs, a new type of electrode has been developed to improve performance and make them less invasive in humans: the Thin Film LIFE (tfLIFE).

So far, the project has produced excellent science and engineering to create an impressive prototype. The next step is to test the device in humans.

Currently researchers are addressing all necessary medical and ethical issues for implantation in human volunteers. A clinical partner has been identified and the Local Ethical Committee has given the approval for the clinical validation of CYBERHAND system, which should begin in 2006.

Some companies have expressed interest in commercialising the system. Nevertheless, it could be five to eight years before the device clears all the tests necessary to prove its safety, usability, and robustness.

Source: IST Results


http://www.physorg.com/news8527.html

 

[pintquaff]

reminds me of an operation earlier this year (i think). it was in either southamptom or portsmouth but a lady who had a paralized arm had been fitted up with some gizmos to bypass the defective nerves and stuff to make the arm work. Ive not heared any follow up stories on this, would be intressted in any though.

 

[ramonmercado]

Woman is fitted with 'bionic' arm

1. Claudia Mitchell simply thinks to make the arm move
2. Chest muscle movement is picked up by nerves, once attached to the real arm, but now re-wired to its replacement
3. Motors control its movement
4. Unfortunately the 11 pound (5kg) arm and hand do not feel touch



The arm in action
A former US Marine has become the first woman in the world to be fitted with a "bionic" arm that she can control by her thoughts alone.
Claudia Mitchell lost her left arm at the shoulder in a motorbike accident.

Her new arm works by detecting movements of a chest muscle that has been connected to the remains of nerves that once went to her real arm.

The first prototype was fitted to double amputee Jesse Sullivan four years ago.

Before the surgery, I doubted that I would ever be able to get my life back

Claudia Mitchell

However, the latest version has been significantly improved.

Using it Ms Mitchell, 26, can now fold clothes, eat a banana and do the washing up.

At a press conference in Chicago to reveal her new arm to the world, Ms Mitchell said: "I can move my elbow up and down and I can open and close my hand simply by thinking that that's what I want to do."

Big advance

With her older prosthetic arm, she could only do one thing at a time - either bend her elbow or open her hand.

The technology, developed by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC), took about five hours to install.


Jesse Sullivan received a prototype version

The ends of the nerves that once controlled the arm were removed from her shoulder and connected to nerves in the chest muscle, some of which conveyed sensation from the skin above.

Over several months the transplanted nerves grew into the muscle tissue.

Once this happened electrodes fixed to a harness worn on the shoulder were able to detect impulses emitted from the nerves into the muscle and forward them to the arm.

These impulses are processed by a computer, which is able to direct the arm to make very precise movements.

Ms Mitchell said: "Before the surgery, I doubted that I would ever be able to get my life back.

"But this arm and the RIC have allowed me to return to a life that is more rewarding and active than I ever could have imagined.

"I am happy, confident and independent."

She said the arm was heavy, but that was due to extra motors which gave it a greater range of function.

Many could benefit

At present, if Ms Mitchell is touched on the patch of skin on her chest where the nerves to the hand have been re-routed, she feels that her hand is being touched.

The next step will be to develop a way is to have the signals come back from the fingers on the prosthetic to the nerves in the chest and then the brain, so that Ms Mitchell can feel pressure, heat or cold, and even a sharp edge.

The Chicago team estimate that the technology could potentially help more than 400 US military personnel who have had amputations after serving in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Todd Kuiken, the director of RIC's Neural Engineering Centre for Bionic Medicine said: "It is so rewarding for me as a physician and a scientist to lead research with the potential to positively impact the lives of amputees."

Ms Mitchell said she was concerned that her new arm looked as attractive as possible.

"When we got the glove that goes over it I asked them if I could put nails on it and they said yes, so I headed straight for the nail salon.

"She (the manicurist) was pretty terrified, she was afraid she was going to mess something up, but I assured her it was OK."




http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5348458.stm

 

[ramonmercado]

Published online: 2 February 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070129-14
Re-wiring brings back touch for amputated limb
Surgery opens door to prosthetics that can 'feel'.
Heidi Ledford



Surgeons have managed to give an amputee not only a prosthetic arm that moves as directed by her thoughts, but also the feeling of touch — albeit in the wrong part of her body.

When Claudia Mitchell presses an area on her chest, where surgeons re-wired the nerves that used to run to her hand, it feels to her as if her fingers are being touched.

The technique opens the door to additional technologies that could one day relay signals from the prosthesis back to the 'fingers' on the chest, allowing an amputee to get sensory information such as touch and temperature from their artificial limb.

Mitchell's success story was revealed in a press conference last year, but now the details have been published: they are reported this week in the Lancet.1

Re-wire

Mitchell was only 24 years old when a motorcycle accident robbed her of her left arm. She got a prosthesis five months later, but wore it infrequently and then only for cosmetic reasons. It just wasn't useful enough to make the discomfort worthwhile, she said.

The nerves that used to run to Mitchell's hand were still intact. They ran to the point of amputation and could receive input from the brain, but had nowhere to send their signals. Todd Kuiken of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and his colleagues moved these nerves and placed them in the muscle above Mitchell's left breast.

Three months after the surgery, the muscles in Mitchell's chest twitched when she tried to close her missing hand or bend her phantom elbow — a sign that nerve function was recovering. Another three months after that, and Mitchell was fitted with a prosthetic arm that could, through detectors on her chest and computer processors, translate those muscle twitches into the appropriate actions. She can therefore operate the prosthesis by thinking about the motions she wants to make — much as she did before the amputation.

Kuiken and his colleagues have created similar arms for three other patients, but Mitchell's operation was their first attempt to move sensory nerves to the chest as well, allowing Mitchell to feel her 'fingers' again. The move was inspired by their first surgery, in which a few sensory nerves spontaneously rerouted to the patient's chest.

Re-learn

The brain could, over time, come to realise that these nerves are actually in the chest rather than the hand, removing the sensation of touch in the amputated limb. But that has yet to happen in the four years since the team's first surgery.

Incorporating sensation is "the next frontier" in prosthetics, says William Craelius, a bioengineer at Rutgers University in New Jersey. But, he warns, adding more sensory relays will complicate the device, necessitating trickier connections and wires, and making the prosthesis heavier. "The big question is, how would an individual take the thing on and off each day and do it right with only one arm?" he says.

To be able to use the device, people must have a functional nervous relay system, which means that those with nerve damage or spinal-cord injuries will not be eligible for it. Nevertheless, the technology is an exciting new step for those coping with the loss of a limb, says Leigh Hochberg, a neurologist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Providence, Rhode Island.



References
Kuiken T.A., et al. Lancet, 369. 371 - 380 (2007).

Story from [email protected]:
http://news.nature.com//news/2007/070129/070129-14.html

 

[ramonmercado]

Smart prosthetics

Bionic people

Feb 22nd 2007 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition


We can rebuild him. We have the technology

ABLE-BODIED readers, imagining themselves crippled by a broken spine, might not necessarily think of urinary incontinence as being at the top of the list of their problems. Ask those who are actually crippled, though, and it is, indeed, top for all those who do not need mechanical help to breathe. Designing electronic bladder-control devices is therefore not the minor sideline that might naively be thought. And that is exactly what William de Groat of the University of Pittsburgh does.

Dr de Groat was one of a group of speakers at this week's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science who described recent advances in what they refer to as smart prosthetics—and the rest of the world, in thrall to a 1970s television series called “The Six Million Dollar Man”, refers to as bionics. What these researchers are actually engaged in, though, is the construction of parallel nervous systems that fill in what injury or disease has destroyed.

A healthy individual's bladder is regulated by his brain. One set of nerves keeps it relaxed while another keeps tight the sphincter through which it empties. When stretch receptors in the bladder's wall tell the brain it is full, the system goes into reverse. (How much control an individual has over this depends on the signal from the stretch receptors.)

If the spinal cord is damaged in a way that cuts the bladder off from the brain, the nervous tissue below the break will often remodel itself to create a new bladder-emptying reflex. But it does not do a very good job. The bladder neither fills nor empties properly. Dr de Groat's device overcomes this by stimulating one particular nerve that is connected to the sphincter. Studies in animals have shown that signals from this nerve can control the new bladder reflex. Low-frequency electrical stimulation prompts urine storage. High-frequency stimulation prompts emptying. Although the device will not restore voluntary voiding, and patients will not know when they are going to urinate, the bladder will empty more completely and far less frequently than without the prosthesis. This not only reduces incontinence, but also the risk of bladder infection.

Having solved the problem of urination, however, most of those paralysed by spinal-cord injury would like to be able to move again. Hunter Peckham of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and John Donoghue of Brown University in Rhode Island are trying to help them to do just that.

Dr Peckham's parallel nervous system picks up electrical signals from the neck and shoulder muscles. These muscles have some involvement in normal arm and leg movement, as the body's whole posture changes when the limbs move. When they twitch useful information about the brain's intentions can be extracted from them.

A cable that runs under the skin from the neck electrodes to the patient's abdomen carries information to a small box that transmits it to another box, which is worn over the skin and contains a computer processor. The two boxes form the alternative nervous system's alternative brain. A program written by Dr Peckham's colleagues interprets the signal and decides which arm or leg muscles need to contract, and by how much, in order to accomplish what the brain is trying to achieve. Each of the relevant muscles has been wired up to the internal box (which is powered by electrical induction from a battery in the external one). The information on how much to contract is translated into pulses of electricity that are sent to each of the relevant muscles and bingo! a previously paralysed patient is able to pick things up, stand or even walk—albeit with the assistance of a Zimmer frame.

Dr Donoghue's system goes even further. He has been experimenting with the idea of collecting signals straight from the brain's motor cortex and using them to direct mechanical devices such as artificial arms and even wheelchairs. After extensive trials on monkeys, he has now studied four human patients who each have had an array of 100 tiny electrodes implanted in their brains. These people are able to manipulate objects using mechanical arms and hands.

The next step would be to link the two ideas together and have Dr Donoghue's brain electrodes direct Dr Peckham's boxes. That really would act like an artificial nervous system bypassing the patient's broken natural one. And it shouldn't cost $6m a man.

http://www.economist.com/science/displa ... id=8733655

 

[ramonmercado]

I think this fits here. But rocket powered? Could be dangerous.

Rocket-Powered Mechanical Arm
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
By Emily Singer
Scientists are developing a revolutionary prosthetic arm that runs on rocket fuel.
Scientists at Vanderbilt University are developing a prosthetic arm with 10 times the power of currently available devices. Powered by a rocket motor, the prototype arm weighs about the same as a natural arm and can curl 20 to 25 pounds.

Unlike conventional prostheses, which can bend only at the elbow and the clawlike hand, the new arm has independently movable fingers and a bendable wrist. But that additional functionality requires a more efficient energy source. According to a press release from Vanderbilt,

At a certain point, the weight of the batteries required to provide the energy to operate the arm for a reasonable period becomes a problem. It was the poor power-to-weight ratio of the batteries that drove [Michael] Goldfarb to look for alternatives in 2000 while he was working on a previous exoskeleton project for DARPA. He decided to miniaturize the monopropellant rocket motor system that is used by the space shuttle for maneuvering in orbit. His adaptation impressed the Johns Hopkins researchers, so they offered him $2.7 million in research funding to apply this approach to the development of a prosthetic arm.

Goldfarb's power source is about the size of a pencil and contains a special catalyst that causes hydrogen peroxide to burn. When hydrogen peroxide burns, it produces pure steam. The steam is used to open and close a series of valves. The valves are connected to the spring-loaded joints by belts made of a special monofilament used in appliance handles and aircraft parts. A small sealed canister of hydrogen peroxide that easily fits in the upper arm can provide enough energy to power the device for 18 hours of normal activity.

While it may sound scary to walk around with a rocket motor, the scientists say that they have addressed those concerns.

By covering the hottest parts with special insulating plastic, they were able to reduce surface temperatures enough so they are safe to touch. The steam exhaust was also a problem, which they decided to handle in as natural a fashion as possible: by venting it through a porous cover, where it evaporates like natural perspiration. "The amount of water involved is about the same as a person would normally sweat from their arm in a warm day," Goldfarb says.

See a video of the arm here.
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/exploration/s ... icarm.html


http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/19678/

 

[ramonmercado]

Man with bionic arm dies after Austria car crash
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11607930

Christian Kandlbauer sitting in a specially adapted car Christian Kandlbauer passed his driving test in a specially adapted car

A man thought to be the first to drive using a mind-controlled robotic arm has died in an Austrian hospital after a serious car crash.

It is not known whether his bionic arm had any role in causing the accident.

Christian Kandlbauer, 22, was found in the wreckage of his specially-adapted Subaru on Tuesday.

Late on Thursday he was pronounced brain-dead in intensive care at the Graz hospital and his life support was switched off.

Mr Kandlbauer lost both of his arms four years ago, after being shocked by 20,000 volts.
Continue reading the main story
Related stories

* Kandlbauer on his hi-tech robotic limb

He was fitted with a mind-controlled robotic arm by the medical technology company Otto Bock Healthcare, which said it was the first project of its kind in Europe.

Using both his left and right arm - which was a normal prosthetic limb - he was able to pass his driving test in a specially converted car.

On Tuesday he was found by a lorry driver who came across his burning car on a road near Bad Waltersdorf in south-east Austria.

The driver managed to put out the flames, but it needed firefighters to extract Mr Kandlbauer from the mangled wreckage.

He had been interviewed by the BBC about his revolutionary limb earlier this year.

"I feel very happy," he said at the time. "It is like my earlier arm - I feel that my arm is a part of my body."

He had returned to work as a warehouse clerk at the garage that once employed him as a mechanic.

He said he was grateful that he had the freedom to get on with his life.

 

[ramonmercado]

Man controls new prosthetic leg using thought alone
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... kiq-oZ6ZvI
22:00 25 September 2013 by Colin Barras

Video: Man controls robotic leg using thoughts alone

A man missing his lower leg has gained precise control over a prosthetic limb, just by thinking about moving it – all because his unused nerves were preserved during the amputation and rerouted to his thigh where they can be used to communicate with a robotic leg.

The man can now seamlessly switch from walking on level ground to climbing stairs and can even kick a football around.

During a traditional limb amputation, the main sensory nerves are severed and lose their function. In 2006, Todd Kuiken and his colleagues at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago in Illinois realised they could preserve some of that functionality by carefully rerouting sensory nerves during an amputation and attaching them to another part of the body.

They could then use the rerouted nerve signals to control a robotic limb, allowing a person to control their prosthesis with the same nerves they originally used to control their real limb.

Kuiken's team first attempted the procedure – which is called targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR) – on people who were having their arm amputated. Now, Kuiken's team has performed TMR for the first time on a man with a leg amputation.

Taking a different route

First, the team rerouted the two main branches of the man's sciatic nerve to muscles in the thigh above the amputation. One branch controls the calf and some foot muscles, the other controls the muscle running down the outside leg and some more foot muscles.

After a few months, the man could control his thigh muscles by thinking about using his missing leg. The next step was to link up a prosthesis.

The robot leg in question is a sophisticated prosthesis: it carries a number of mechanical sensors including gyroscopes and accelerometers, and can be trained to use the information from these sensors to perform certain walking styles. Kuiken's team reckoned that the leg would perform even better if it could infer the user's intended walking style with information from the sciatic nerve.

To do so, the researchers asked their volunteer to attempt to perform certain movements with his missing leg – for instance, flexing the foot – while they monitored the pattern of electric signals from the rerouted nerves in the thigh muscles. The researchers then programmed the robot leg to flex its foot whenever it detected that particular pattern of electrical activity.

Using just the mechanical sensor data, the robotic leg made the correct movement about 87 per cent of the time. With additional data from the nerves, the success rate rose to 98 per cent, and there were no so-called critical errors – errors that increase the risk of the user losing balance and falling. Those kinds of errors are most common when the user suddenly shifts walking style – when they begin to climb stairs, for instance, but with the additional information from the nerves, the robotic leg can make a seamless, natural transition between walking styles (see video).

"I think this kind of work is very important," says Michael Goldfarb at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who helped design the robot leg.

"There's a lot you can do with physical sensors but at some point you really need to know the user's intent – when they want to change from running, to walking, to stair climbing," says Goldfarb. "These electrical signals give you an extra set of information to work on.

"This new generation of robotic legs are much more capable than anything that's come before. They can pretty much do whatever the healthy limb can do," he says.

Journal reference: New England Journal of Medicine, DOI: 10.1056/nejmoa1300126

 

[ramonmercado]

Vid at link.

Soldier Andrew Garthwaite moves bionic arm by thoughts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-25320455
By Sharon Barbour
BBC Look North health reporter

A soldier injured in battle said he is determined to make a success of his new life with a bionic arm

A soldier injured in battle said he is determined to make a success of his new life with a bionic arm he can control with his thoughts.

Cpl Andrew Garthwaite, 26, from South Tyneside, was badly injured in Afghanistan when a Taliban grenade took off his right arm.

He is believed to be the first person in the UK to have such a bionic arm.

It involved surgery, including having his nerve system rewired, and months of learning how to use the new arm.

Cpl Garthwaite was badly injured in Helmand, Afghanistan, in September 2010 when a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade took off his right arm and killed one of his comrades.

'Lost for words'
He was given one arm and learnt how to carry out everyday tasks with it before learning he would have one of the latest models of bionic arm fitted.

To prepare for the technology the soldier underwent six hours of surgery at a hospital in Austria in January 2012 in a procedure called Targeted Muscle Reinnervation (TMR).

The surgeons at the hospital in the Medical University of Vienna had to rewire his nervous system - taking the nerve endings from his shoulder, that would have run down to his hand - and rewired these into his chest muscles.

This has meant over the past 18 months, Cpl Garthwaite has had the sensation of a hand growing in his chest. He has had to learn to use that hand again - with electrodes sending signals into the bionic arm so that he can control the prosthesis.

He is believed to be the first person from the UK to undergo this cutting-edge technique in the field of bionics.

Cpl Garthwaite said he had been "lost for words" when he learnt that and was "honoured" to have been chosen.

The arm was developed by bionics company Otto Bock, in Vienna. It says this new kind of intelligent upper limb prosthesis can be controlled using the same nerves organically responsible for arm movement and enables more natural movements.

Andrew Garthwaite in Afghanistan
Cpl Garthwaite was badly injured in September 2010
The patient, they say, performs movements intuitively, and the prosthesis can directly convert the thought commands.

He will be able to think several moves and his arm and hand will react naturally. His bionic arm will be thought-controlled.

'Weird feeling'
Cpl Garthwaite is now getting used to controlling his new arm and hand. With his nerve system rewired, he can feel his hand in his chest and by thinking of moving individual fingers, he can move his bionic hand.

"Because obviously I haven't had a thumb or a finger for the last three years, then all of a sudden to start feeling stuff is a total weird feeling so you have got to train your brain to move this hand," he said.

But he has to be careful. If he thinks of moving his little finger too quickly it will rotate his hand, all the way around 360 degrees.

This - he says - is "his party trick".

He says it looks "very natural and people generally do not notice that it is a prosthesis, but are often surprised as it makes robotic sounds when it moves.

Cpl Garthwaite said he was enjoying being able to more around the house and being far more independent.

He said: "There is no point in looking back because you can never turn back time.

"I am still very lucky to be here and I am very fortunate to be here and with this new life I have got hopefully I can be very successful in it."

 

[ramonmercado]

Stephen Lowry: first man in Ireland to get bionic hand
By Jayne McCormack
BBC News NI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-25912849

Stephen at work

Stephen Lowry is the first man in Ireland to get a state-of-the-art bionic hand

Everybody needs a helping hand sometimes, but for one man from County Down, that help has come in the form of a special bionic hand, after he lost his right hand in a bomb attack nearly 30 years ago.

Stephen Lowry, 51, is now the owner of a revolutionary new bionic prosthetic hand, believed to be the first of its kind in use on the island of Ireland.

Mr Lowry, who is from Banbridge, lost his hand in an explosion at Cupid's nightclub in Newry in September 1985.

He was working there as a DJ at the time and said the loss of his hand was "devastating".

Surgeries
Speaking to BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme, he said: "At the end of the night, I was helping to clear up with the guys that worked there, and the bomb was wrapped up in a coat.

"I picked the coat up and it blew up in my face and blew my hand off.

"It was devastating, and very difficult for a long, long time. I think I spent about two-and-a-half months in hospital between different surgeries and skin grafts.

Mr Lowry has been given several cosmetic and prosthetic hands since his injury, and said that as time has passed, life has become less difficult.

'Unbelievable'
He was using an electronic hand up until recently, when he was offered to test out the new bionic hand.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

The most amazing thing for me was to be able to go out to dinner and cut my own steak. Beforehand, I had to ask my wife to cut it up for me and now I can do it myself”

Stephen Lowry
The Bebionic hand is made by Leeds-based company RSL Steeper and was provided to him by Musgrave Park Hospital's Regional Disablement Services.

The prosthesis comes with a flesh-coloured skin glove, and works on advanced sensor technology that picks up the electrical impulses generated from the biceps and triceps of the amputee.

Mr Lowry said it has dramatically changed his life.

"I can hold a pen with it, write with it, and even use a computer mouse with it," he said.

"The fingers move in different directions, and I can point with it - it's unbelievable. It's so easy to use, and it's a real credit to the company that developed it.

"The technicians in Musgrave were also absolutely fantastic about fitting it properly and getting it set up."

Bionic pilot
Despite being unable to do everything that he would like to do, Mr Lowry said even being able to do the little things has made a huge difference.

"It does help out a lot, but there still things that I would love to be able to do, but the hand really does help around the house," he said.


The new hand means he can now hold a computer mouse, a pen and even learn to fly a plane
"The most amazing thing for me was to be able to go out to dinner and cut my own steak. Beforehand, I had to ask my wife to cut it up for me and now I can do it myself."

His new hand has also given him the chance to learn to fly an airplane, something he was unable to do before he got the bionic prosthesis.

He said: "I'm still a student but I do all the flying of the aircraft and my instructor is just there to make sure things don't go wrong.

"It's absolutely brilliant to be able to fly the aircraft. The hand has made a world of difference."

'Robocop'
Being the first man on the island of Ireland to get a bionic hand, Mr Lowry said he is very grateful and that a lot of people have been stopping him in the street to ask him about it.

"When I go out and about people say well done or 'that's amazing'. They don't pass any remark," he said.

Stephen also said the hand comes with very sophisticated software that allows him to program what the hand can do.

"I have software which means I can program the hand from the laptop and get it to do different things than it does now, so it actually facilitates different needs as well. It's some piece of kit," he said.

"It has its benefits even when you're just holding a cup because the fingers all curl in underneath it and you don't drop it. Robocop eat your heart out!"

 

[ramonmercado]

Vid at link.

Bionic Suit Puts Paraplegics Back On Their Feet
March 20, 2014 |
http://www.scientificamerican.com/video ... heir-feet/

A powered exoskeletal suit is giving paraplegics a new lease on life, allowing them to walk on their own - even up stairs. The ReWalk is the latest example of a developing technology that might one day make wheelchairs a thing of the past for spinal cord injury patients.

 

[ramonmercado]

Bionic Olympics to be hosted in 2016
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26766095

Artists impression of competitors in the Cybathlon

Totally paralysed people will be able to take part, using a brain-computer interface

The first Cybathlon, an Olympics for bionic athletes, will take place in Switzerland in October 2016.

The event will include a race where competitors control an avatar via a brain interface.

There will also be races for competitors wearing prosthetic limbs and exo-skeletons.

Hosted by the Swiss National Competence Center of Research, it is hoped the competition will spur interest in human performance-enhancing technology.

Exoskeleton race
More people are walking again thanks to exo-skeletons
The brain-computer interface race is designed for competitors who are paralysed from the neck down. They will control an avatar in a computer racing game via a headset that connects the brain to a computer.

There will also be races for those wearing arm or leg prosthetics, an exoskeleton race and a wheelchair race.

The assistive devices worn by the athletes, who will be known as pilots, can either be ones that are already commercially available or prototypes from research labs.

There will be two medals for each competition, one for the pilot and one for company that developed the device.

Bike race
There will also be a wheelchair race
Bionic limbs and exoskeletons are becoming much more technically advanced, offering those wearing them much more realistic movements.

Prof Hugh Herr, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, showed off some of the prosthetics that his team have been working on at the Ted (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Vancouver last week.

He is currently in negotiations with health care professionals to get the bionic limbs more widely available to those who need them.

Artist impression of pilots
Pilots with arm prosthetics will be able to compete
Often though there was a disconnect between technology and patients, said Prof Robert Riener, event organiser, from the University of Switzerland.

"The idea is that we want to push development of assistive technologies towards devices that patients can really use in everyday life," he told the BBC.

"Some of the current technologies look very fancy but are a long way from being practical and user-friendly," he added.

The other main aim of the games is to allow people to compete who have never had the opportunity before.

"We allow technology that has previously been excluded from the Paralympics. By making it a public event we want to get rid of the borders between patients, society and the technology community," Prof Riener said.

 

[GNC]

But will they make the chi-chi-chi-cha-cha-cha-cha noise?

 

[ramonmercado]

Bionic hands are go. Three men with serious nerve damage had their hands amputated and replaced by prosthetic ones that they can control with their minds.

The procedure, dubbed "bionic reconstruction", was carried out by Oskar Aszmann at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria.

The men had all suffered accidents which damaged the brachial plexus – the bundle of nerve fibres that runs from the spine to the hand. Despite attempted repairs to those nerves, the arm and hand remained paralysed.

"But still there are some nerve fibres present," says Aszmann. "The injury is so massive that there are only a few. This is just not enough to make the hand alive. They will never drive a hand, but they might drive a prosthetic hand." ...

http://www.newscientist.com/article...d-replaced-with-bionic-ones.html#.VO3gPPmsWug

 

[ramonmercado]

A research team from the University of Houston has created an algorithm that allowed a man to grasp a bottle and other objects with a prosthetic hand, powered only by his thoughts.

The technique, demonstrated with a 56-year-old man whose right hand had been amputated, uses non-invasive brain monitoring, capturing brain activity to determine what parts of the brain are involved in grasping an object. With that information, researchers created a computer program, or brain-machine interface (BMI), that harnessed the subject's intentions and allowed him to successfully grasp objects, including a water bottle and a credit card. The subject grasped the selected objects 80 percent of the time using a high-tech bionic hand fitted to the amputee's stump.

Previous studies involving either surgically implanted electrodes or myoelectric control, which relies upon electrical signals from muscles in the arm, have shown similar success rates, according to the researchers. ...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150331131336.htm

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Scientists Have Created Bionic Jellyfish And Successfully Controlled Their Movements

Source: sciencealert.com
Date: 23 February, 2020

Scientists have 'puppeteered' the movements of a jellyfish and made it even faster than the real thing.

Taking artificial control with a microelectronic implant, researchers have increased the natural swimming speed of a live moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita) by nearly threefold.

What's more, they achieved this with only a little bit of external power and twice the amount of metabolic effort from the animal.

"Thus," the authors conclude, "this biohybrid robot uses 10 to 1,000 times less external power per mass than other aquatic robots reported in literature."

Jellyfish are known to be incredibly efficient swimmers, much more so than any machine we humans have created, so their low cost of transport makes them an ideal "natural scaffold".

While it's true certain underwater vehicles can travel much faster than a jellyfish, so far, robots that try and mimic jellyfish behaviour require orders of magnitude more energy and are usually tethered to an external power supply.

[...]

Of course, that would require a lot more control than we currently have. So far, the team has merely shown they can enhance jellyfish swimming without undue cost to the metabolism or health of the animal.

The key to this small but significant step is a portable microelectronic swim controller, which, when attached to the jellyfish, can generate pulse waves and stimulate muscle contractions.

Through this technology, scientists can speed up a jellyfish's propulsion until it hits an optimal point, where the greatest speed is achieved with the smallest energy output.

https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...-ocean-with-human-controlled-bionic-jellyfish

 

[Mythopoeika]

Excellent! Killer jellyfish that can be controlled.

 

[kamalktk]

What happens when the company that made your bionic eyes goes out of business ?

THEIR BIONIC EYES ARE NOW OBSOLETE AND UNSUPPORTED​

Second Sight left users of its retinal implants in the dark​

https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete#toggle-gdpr

 

[Trevp666]

They never saw that coming.