Thanks for the post. My characterization of “media bias” wasn’t meant to have a chilling effect, but simply to point out that the real story is often a little more complicated than most people have time for in an average blog post or TV magazine story. Indeed I believe that the real story about prosthetic arms is not necessarily the technical problem itself, but the economic problem in translating any of this from the lab to the clinic. Truly revolutionizing prosthetics means solving this more difficult problem. For those interested in reading more, check out the IEEE article that I wrote on the topic here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/open-arms

By way of highlighting the problem, it’s worth pointing out that the first foot-controlled prototype arm was developed in the 1950s by IBM’s Samuel Alderson, the inventor of the crash test dummy (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/national/18alderson.html). The most simple myoelectric arm control technology was first demonstrated in the lab around the same time, and there has been a little-used successor based on these principles commercially available since the 1970s. The more sophisticated pattern recognition technology that I demonstrated on “60 Minutes” (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/10/60minutes/main4935509.shtml) has in fact been studied in the lab for more than 20 years, and is not really scientifically new at all.

The successful introduction of a product that uses pattern recognition technology, however, would be new–because of the disconnect between basic science research and clinical translation for orphan markets. I hope that we can address the duplication of effort that seems to be occurring on a number of government efforts to develop prosthetic arms (not at all exclusive to DARPA). It may be that the only real economic incentive in this area is the receipt of more government grants. And when those dry up, arm amputees will be left with whatever was developed during this feeding frenzy.

The real question is not that of victory for one or another engineering team or government agency, but whether the interests of arm amputees are a casualty of the battle.

Jon Kuniholm

Thanks for the post. My characterization of “media bias” wasn’t meant to have a chilling effect, but simply to point out that the real story is often a little more complicated than most people have time for in an average blog post or TV magazine story. Indeed I believe that the real story about prosthetic arms is not necessarily the technical problem itself, but the economic problem in translating any of this from the lab to the clinic. Truly revolutionizing prosthetics means solving this more difficult problem. For those interested in reading more, check out the IEEE article that I wrote on the topic here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/open-arms

By way of highlighting the problem, it’s worth pointing out that the first foot-controlled prototype arm was developed in the 1950s by IBM’s Samuel Alderson, the inventor of the crash test dummy (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/national/18alderson.html). The most simple myoelectric arm control technology was first demonstrated in the lab around the same time, and there has been a little-used successor based on these principles commercially available since the 1970s. The more sophisticated pattern recognition technology that I demonstrated on “60 Minutes” (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/10/60minutes/main4935509.shtml) has in fact been studied in the lab for more than 20 years, and is not really scientifically new at all.

The successful introduction of a product that uses pattern recognition technology, however, would be new–because of the disconnect between basic science research and clinical translation for orphan markets. I hope that we can address the duplication of effort that seems to be occurring on a number of government efforts to develop prosthetic arms (not at all exclusive to DARPA). It may be that the only real economic incentive in this area is the receipt of more government grants. And when those dry up, arm amputees will be left with whatever was developed during this feeding frenzy.

The real question is not that of victory for one or another engineering team or government agency, but whether the interests of arm amputees are a casualty of the battle.

Jon Kuniholm