Editor's Blog
Frederick Downs, Jr., a Vietnam veteran and director of VA’s Prosthetic and Sensory Aids Service who lost his left arm, was "brought to tears" when a prosthetic arm allowed him to take a drink of bottled water with a single motion.
Designed by Segway inventor Dean Kamen, the “Luke” prosthetic arm is named after Luke Skywalker’s famous duel with Darth Vader in Star Wars Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (“… I am your father,” reveals Vader after cutting off Luke’s dueling hand with his lightsaber).
Prof. Yosi Shacham-Diamand of TAU’s Department of Engineering, working with a team of European Union (EU) scientists, has now gone a step further than Kamen. His team has successfully wired a state-of-the-art artificial hand to existing nerve endings in the stump of a severed arm. Here’s a video (courtesy of the BBC News):
Dubbed SmartHand, “the smart bio-adaptive hand prosthesis,” this intelligent artificial prosthetic hand mimics the movement of a real human hand and gives the wearer a true sensation of feeling and touch. Four electric motors and 40 sensors are directly linked to the brain and activated when a SmartHand touches an object. "I am using muscles which I haven’t used for years. I grab something hard, and then I can feel it in the fingertips, which is strange, as I don’t have them anymore. It’s amazing," says Robin af Ekenstam of Sweden, the project’s first human wearer.
I grab something hard, and then I can feel it in the fingertips, which is strange, as I don’t have them anymore.
SmartHand is a highly innovative, interdisciplinary project, combining forefront research from material sciences, bio and information technologies with cognitive neuroscience. Drawing on the earlier work of The Artificial Hand Project (biocompatibility, recognition of bio-signals), Cyberhand (biomechatronics), and FreeHand (nerve recordings and stimulations), SmartHand is very much like the prosthetic hand that Luke Skywalker receives after his rescue from Cloud City — except lacking skin. While the prototype looks somewhat “robotic” now, SmartHand researchers plan to equip it with artificial skin in the future that will give the wearer’s brain even more tactile feedback. "Perfectly good nerve endings remain at the stem of a severed limb," says Dr. Shacham-Diamand. "Our team is building the interface between the device and the nerves in the arm, connecting cognitive neuroscience with state-of-the-art information technologies."
While the “Luke” prosthetic arm currently requires a foot controller, the SmartHand is controlled quite naturally by the wearer’s thoughts. “The muscle signals, also called ElectroMyoGraphic (EMG) signals, are recorded by surface electrodes applied on the skin so that information can be transmitted to the motor in the artificial hand,” reports the project’s FAQ. “So, if the amputee thinks of extending the fingers, EMG signals from extensor muscles make the motor extend the fingers in the hand prosthesis. If the amputee thinks of closing the hand, corresponding signals from flexor muscles instruct the motor to close the artificial hand.”
There are just a few types of hand prostheses available on the market today, most of them allowing very simple movements — basically opening and closing the hand using EMG signals. They are heavy and difficult to keep clean and require power support from heavy batteries. Also, the wearer has no feeling. With SmartHand, amputees can accomplish more complex movements with a hand that is easily cleaned. More importantly, wearers can feel what they touch and grasp.
The TAU/EU team could also have built bionic legs wired to the brain. The team first chose to build a hand, however, because of its complexity. "The fingers in the hand are the most complex appendages we have," says Prof. Shacham-Diamand. "The brain needs to synchronize the movement of each digit in a very complicated way."
Simple leg prosthetics are used today even among animals. Recently, Meadow-the-Calf became the first bovine calf fitted with double prosthetics, according to Colorado State veterinarian Dr. Robert Callan. Lucky the box turtle in Petaluma, California lost his front legs in what was believed to be an attack by a raccoon. Now he’s back sauntering around with furniture sliders taped to his belly.
The poster child amputee is fashion model Aimee Mullins, who lost both her legs to fibular hemimelia (missing fibula bones). With her 12 pairs of legs, she considers herself “super-enabled” rather than “disabled.” Here’s a video of her recent TED presentation:
Her stirring story is an inspiration to all amputees. With the prospect of yet another pair of legs based on the TAU/EU technology –- this time perhaps allowing her to feel prosthetic toes –- she’ll be able to use her mind to directly control her legs.
Merging mind and machine… tens of thousands of veterans and other amputees now have the same promise as Luke Skywalker — replacement limbs that respond to thought.
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12 Comments
Life imitates art! One of my favorite sci-fi novels is Limbo (1952) by Bernard Wolfe. He envisions a world where people get amputations so they can have super-power artificial arms and legs. Only took 57 years! He also anticipated the use of William James’ phrase, “The moral equivalents of war” which was made (in)famous during the Carter administration.
Two things.
Aimee Mullins just did 3 articles on Gizmodo about prosthetics
http://gizmodo.com/5401408/is-choosing-a-prosthesis-so-different-than-picking-a-pair-of-glasses
http://gizmodo.com/5403322/racing-on-carbon-fiber-legs-how-abled-should-we-be
http://gizmodo.com/5404227/normal-was-never-cool-inception-of-perception
Second, interesting new technology developed by Nanosonic, MetalRubber. This is a rubber like material that stretches and moves like rubber, but has the toughness and conductivity of steel. I can visualize a future prosthetic covered with metalrubber in which thousands of MEM sensors are embedded for feeling over the internal structure, creating a “skin” which can be made to look nearly bio identical to human skin, but be impervious to cuts tears and the typical problems of rubber and latex.
Give us ten years and we’ll start seeing an end to Handicaps. Maybe even sooner.
And then the age of the cyber enhanced will start.
What I find both interesting and depressing about this article is the lack of forward movment in these advancements here in the US. While we are improving on the old it seems that researchers in the EU & UK are far out pacing us in the machine/neural interface area. Are we in the US so afraid of a cyborgian future that we refuse to develop the technology or have we just allowed the insurance companies to dictate our policy to us by saying that the development cost and risks are to high to afford.
I think a lot of it had to do with the lack of basic science funding in the US due to the massive drains on our economy of Bush’s two wars and his deregulating everything in sight to allow his business buddies to plunder at whim.
If Obama would ever end the wars, we could massively fund science and resume our lead in every field.
Some of the issue may indeed be funding but I feel a larger part is something else. Back in 2002 the Dobelle Institute introduced an artificial vision system that enabled a man who had lost his vision to see, As I remember it all the research and building of the system was done in the US but when the implant (similar to a cochlear hearing implant) was to be installed they had to go to Portugal for the operation because of all the red tape surrounding the experimental surgery.
Innovation is taking place in the US but it is all based on the old tech of sensors outside the body assigning reactions in the prosthetic to muscle twitches. There is still lots of funding being done but it is not in the area of the newer work which is mainly done in the UK/EU is using internal neural interfaces which uses the same nerves that used to control the missing limb to control the prosthetic which also allows for tactile feedback well beyond what US innovators like Dean Kamen can hope for.
As for more funding going to this research it looks like that may actually be the opposite soon as the health care reform bill derives a large chunk of its funding by added taxes in medical device makers so the price of prosthetics will increase and these companies will need to curb their research spending in order to keep the product price down.
One other example, take a look at the work done by Kevin Warwick and his team then try and find any similar research in the US that has progressed as far as he has. I say progressed because some of his experiments are continuations of research that was started in the US but dropped when they hit what some might call the “ethics wall”.
http://www.kevinwarwick.com/
This country (the US) really needs to get rid of some of the rules that it has in place that strangle innovation in order to protect the sensitive morals of a vocal minority.
The FDA is a roadblock to many medical technologies in the USA, including a gene therapy cure for cancer undergoing trials in China.
However, the cost of manufacturing and prototyping medical devices is going to become rapidly cheaper in the near future, as Xerox recently revealed they have perfected the ability to create entire electronic devices using a printing technology. Electronics will soon be able to be printed on flexible substrates including paper, cloth, and plastics, which will mean not only that the cost of manufacture will drop precipitously, but that the mean time to design a circuit, prototype it, and test it will become hours not weeks.
Additionally, while it is not the same as direct feedback into the nerves, Emotiv has developed a inexpensive mind reading device that is far more sensitive than previous types, and could easily be used to control something like the Kamen arm.
Also, with the advances being made in aerogel and carbon nanofiber muscles, expect a version using actual synthetic muscle soon. And it’s likely that by the end of the decade, stem cells could be used to create a biological “skin” to cover the inner artificial structure. Thus the next step beyond the “Luke Skywalker” arm could well be the “Terminator” arm
Thanks for the heads up on Emotiv, I had seen others like this but had missed this company. While this technology would be good for some applications like driving a wheel chair using it to control an arm presents large differences in comparison to nerve interfaces. When picking up a glass you would have only visual cues to tell you if you had a proper grip on the glass (if you had an audible cue then you tightened your grip too much), using a nerve interface there would be pressure and temperature sensors in the hand that would allow you to judge your grip beyond just visually. Likewise a leg prosthetic could have sensors built in to it that would tell you if it was securely on the ground before you put weight on it so you would not need to look down while walking.
While external controls of prosthetics will be an improvement over available tech. it will probably be obsolete before making it to market because of the research being done in the EU/UK.
Quite agreed.
The future of prosthetics that I see is definitely direct neural interface, permanently attached, blood sugar or Kasimir well powered devices which would be directly attached to bone and sheathed in living tissue.
I also see great strides in full limb regeneration using a combination of stem cell research, and the technologies of bone and organ printing, both of which are in labs right now.
However, I do not see the artificial option going away even when a limb can be grown and attached, simply because once full human equivalence has been achieved, I do not see an enhanced version being far behind. Current carbon nanomuscle is only approx human strength, but is as rigid as diamond in the directions it does not contract, so I expect further research will likely find a form capable of contracting far more strongly, or a combination of MEMs and CN may be created.
However, of special interest to me is the fact that with direct nerve interfaces, more than just simple replacement is possible. A limb with direct neural interfaces would also be useful for attaching additional prosthetics. The possibilities of cosmetic prosthetics is a near certainty. Humans with cybernetic tails or wings will likely begin occurring, or as was illustrated by Aimee Mullins in the video, more extreme cosmetic modifications such as anthropomorphs (human/animal hybrid) will appear.
As a Transhumanist, I find it exciting to contemplate a future in which humanity will no longer be trapped in the form dictated to it by genetic lottery.
Incredible! I have been fascinated with this type of research and development since studying V.S. Ramachandran’s phantom limb and synesthesia work in a Philosophy of Mind class at university. We are really starting to make progress; things are rapidly advancing. Great work by this team! Congratulations!
Life imitates art! One of my favorite sci-fi novels is Limbo (1952) by Bernard Wolfe. He envisions a world where people get amputations so they can have super-power artificial arms and legs. Only took 57 years! He also anticipated the use of William James’ phrase, “The moral equivalents of war” which was made (in)famous during the Carter administration.
The future of prosthetics that I see is definitely direct neural interface, permanently attached, blood sugar or Kasimir well powered devices which would be directly attached to bone and sheathed in living tissue.