Copying Antler-Structure Means Better Prosthetics

tygerstripes writes "The BBC reports that a breakthrough in prosthetic technology will allow titanium to be grafted directly to the bone and then protrude from the skin without risking infection. Research by the Centre for Bio-Medical Engineering, UCL and Stanmore Implants looks into the way that the structure and porosity of deers' antlers prevents infection from entering the break in the skin. Early trials and a fairly gruesome picture show that by mimicking this they can successfully provide amputees with more comfortable, permanent prosthetics. Combined with bionic muscle and other recent developments, we may be very close to fully-integrated prosthetics."

Holy Grail of Prosthetics

[jameskojiro]

The integration of Prosthetics w/o infection is a kinda holy grail of prosthetics, Now we will beable to make dataports that are merged witht he skin with ease. Also the ability to say make a prosthetic hand that uses the existing muscle in the forearm for movement and have it installed full time!!! Most prostetics have to be taken off at night tio give the skin some time to rest due to irritation and whatnot, now they can left on 24/7 and designed to be move like natural human body parts. Merge a little more robotics tech and in several more years primitive versions of "Ghost in the Shell" type cyborgs may become closer to reality.

Movement control categories

[doc modulo]

What I'm interested in is if there's already been a third kind of prosthetic movement control system invented.

My personal categorization of the different kinds of movement of prosthetic limbs:
1. On/off movement in any direction, like your limb was controlled by the digital joypad of a console.
2. Variable speed movement in any given direction, like your prosthetic limb was controlled by an analog joystick of a console.
3. Absolute positioning of your limb, like the new Nintendo Wii controller or a mouse.

Is there anything like my third category available? Together with this new grafting technology it would mean almost complete recovery for amputees.

I know that the human body doesn't track it's own limb positions in real-time, even in normal mammals, but human movement is still more like category 3 than the other two.

Is there something similar out already? I read an article about a guy who's arm prosthesis was directly attached to an arm nerve. Paraphrased: "I could move it as if it was real, I just had to think about moving my arm".

So any info on category 3 movement controls will be appreciated, interesting stuff.