Bionic Arm Provides Hope for Amputees

Static-MT writes to mention a CNN article about what doctors are referring to as the first thought-controlled artificial limb. Arm owner Jesse Sullivan has two prosthetic limbs, and the left one is an advanced prototype in development by the folks at DARPA. From the article: "Sullivan's bionic arm represents an advance over typical artificial arms, like the right-arm prosthesis he uses, which has a hook and operates with sequential motions. There is no perceivable delay in the motions of Sullivan's flesh-colored, plastic-like left arm. Until now, it has been nearly impossible to recreate the subtle and complex motion of a human arm."

Re:The next step

[TheGreatHegemon]

"What I'd really like to see is the other end of the equation, actual touch perception. And I don't mean if you feel the shock when hitting something with the arm, I mean feeling textures, or perhaps it'd be easier to start off with hot/cold sensors, since we know how to do that with existing equipment." Honestly, I think that's not important in the least right now. Perfecting this arm for motion would be far more important right now. The sheer idea of having a useable ARM is simple wonderful for an amputee. An amputee, I am sure, wouldn't mind having a useable arm right now, even if it means foregoing the ability to feel. To have such a large degree of ability back far outstrips even the need for being able to feel for the time being - Feeling is a nice touch, having a useable arm is a gift like no other.

Will it work the same for all?

[unPlugged-2.0]

Wow this is a really great breakthrough at least as far as the article describes it but there are a lot of unanswered questions.

The mechanism is basically built by connecting the way other nerves and muscles in the body operate when you do a voluntary action such as clenching your hand or flexing your arm. However this is just the muscle patterns and nerve synapses of one man.

If there is one thing I learned from my failed pre-med career it was that all human bodies interact differently. How will this work then for the masses? Would this have to be custom made for every person? Some kind of custom AI module or custom firmware that is uploaded based on your user profile or based off motion capture on your other arm.

Also from a tech side, what kind of chips do they use to do the processing of this. TFA doesn't mention the stuff we really want to hear.

The article is a little misleading though because the arm doesn't actually listen to the brain it listens to other portions around the arm based on a certain programmed sequence of events. I was really excited because I thought that they had made a device that responds to ECG waves from the brain and actually knows how to recognize certain patterns.

Even though I come off negative I must say that this is a great step in the right direction. The better AI and integration with the brain will surely come with time.

I just hope the AI arms don't decide to overthrow the arm owner or worse a la Doc. Octavius.

another story

[brunascle]

MIT's Technology Review had a similar article [technologyreview.com] in july.

the have videos (.MOV) of a patient controlling a computer cursor [technologyreview.com] and a prosthetic hand [technologyreview.com]

hope?

[blackmonday]

I get a little irked at the "hope for amputees thing". One of my best friends has an arm to the elbow only, and he doesn't need any hope - he's just fine. He has adapted well, and there are few things he cannot do. He has a fake arm for cosmetic reasons, and it helps him to grip simple things, but lets get real. Amputees are not hopeless, they can do most things you and I can do, and frankly some of them (my friend included) put their two-limb friends to shame with their dexterity.

Re:The next step

[plalonde2]

If you check out the various videos, they also have a short demo of touch: the same re-wiring of nerves to the pectoral muscle can be used for feedback. In the case of the female patient, she has two fingers worth of touch, and it's pressure sensitive.
Very impressive.

Physics Today covered this three weeks ago

[Guinnessy]

See http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-9/pdf/vol59 no9p24_25.pdf [physicstoday.org]

Re:The next step

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually tactile sensation and feedback to the user IS part of this program. There are groups at UC Irvine, Oakridge, and SSSA (in Italy) developing sensors while Univ. Utah and Chicago PT groups are working on haptic feedback systems. If successful this project will truly revolutionize prosthetics.

And for those who have commented that the sensation of touch would be "icing on the cake" but that movement is more important, I urge you to check out various research that has shown that without systems for afferent feedback even wholly natural, efferent control is greatly reduced in effectiveness. To summarize one relevant study, whole subjects (i.e. uninjured, normal people) had their fingers anaesthetized but retained full motor control. The result was that without a sense of touch they could not perform even simple tasks (e.g. lighting a match).

Re:Will it work the same for all?

[vidarh]

If you actually bothered to read the article, you'd have seen that it doesn't do that at all - the severed nerves are surgically connected to an intact muscle, such as the pecs, and once the nerves can activate parts of the muscle they attach the appropriate electrodes to the appropriate parts of the muscle.