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Bionic Limbs With Artificial Intelligence

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by Aaron Saenz on August 27th, 2009

That little blue box is one of the world's smartest knees.

That little blue box is one of the world's smartest knees.

They won’t give you superhuman strength, and they definitely don’t cost six million dollars, but the artificial limbs from Ossur can think to help you walk better. The Rheo Knee, Power Knee, and Proprio Foot prosthetics all carry onboard artificial intelligences that help amputees use their bionic limbs with security and accuracy. Not only do the limbs move in a natural way and provide the strength to climb stairs foot over foot, they learn the user’s gait. Overtime, the bionic limbs will know how you walk better than you do. Check out a French demonstration video of the Power Knee after the break.

Based in Reykjavik, Iceland Ossur is a global leader in prosthetics, braces, and orthopedic education. The founder developed some of the first artificial limbs by testing them on his daughter. The new wave of bionic limbs may be drastically better than older models, but this isn’t enough for current CEO Jon Sigurdsson. His goal is to create limbs that are as good or better than the real thing. Certainly the knees and feet with artificial intelligence go a long way to helping amputees walk and run as well as their peers

Both the Rheo knee and Proprio foot (shown in image above) contain onboard computers that perform minute changes to the prosthetic to help it respond to variations in movement. The Proprio flexes to match terrain, and adjusts the ankle to fit different slopes. The Rheo adjusts actuators to control leg swing. Together, this provides the user with increased security. The embedded AIs can learn an amputees gait in just 15 steps, but continues to adjust as the user grows accustomed to the devices.

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Man Receives First US Double Hand Transplant

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by Drew Halley on May 26th, 2009

Ten years ago, Jeff Kepner lost both his hands and feet to a bacterial infection. Today, he is recovering from the first US double hand transplant surgery. Soon, he’ll be able to hold his daughter’s hand for the first time in a decade.

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Kepner's surgery underway. Photo courtesy of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Kepner, a 57-year-old pastry chef living in Georgia, got his new hands after a nine-hour surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He is still recovering, but has strong circulation in both hands and has showed no signs of organ rejection. The success of his surgery is in part due to a unique new procedure to improve an organ’s chance of being accepted by the body.

Whenever an organ transplant takes place, doctors have to suppress the recipient’s immune system so that it does not reject the new organ outright. This suppression requires toxic drugs that can increase the chances of infection, cancer, diabetes, or other complications. But in the past decade, an innovative procedure has been used to reduce the need for such drugs while still minimizing the likelihood of rejection. Used during Kepner’s transplant, the procedure transplants stems cells from bone marrow into the donated organs, helping the immune system more quickly recognize the hands as part of the body.

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i-LIMB Revolutionizes the Commercial Prosthetic

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by Drew Halley on March 26th, 2009

ilimb11Think you can spot an amputee?  Think again.  Meet the i-LIMB, the first commercially available prosthetic hand with five individually powered fingers.  Combining a revolutionary functionality with amazingly natural cosmetics, the i-LIMB is changing the lives of amputees across the globe – and blending right in.

Even while Dean Kamen and others we have previously reported on work on advanced robotic prostheses, the i-LIMB shows how keeping it simple can still provide amazing improvements to quality of life for amputees.   The i-LIMB uses electrodes placed on the skin of the remaining portion of the patient’s limb, usually on the top and bottom of the forearm.  When the patient moves the muscles that would normally have extended into their hand, the electrodes pick up on electrical signals generated by the muscle movement.   These signals become the basis for individual finger movement within the i-LIMB.

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Introduced in 2007 by Scottish company Touch Bionics, the i-LIMB is capable of a variety of unique grip positions that allow the user to balance power and precision as needed.  By extending the index finger alone, patients can type on a keyboard or push buttons.  The user can also grip a key or dinner plate by rotating the thumb to meet the side of the index finger.  The prosthetic is capable of stopping when a sufficient grip is achieved, allowing the patient to grip sensitive objects (e.g. a styrofoam cup) without crushing them.  These more fine-tuned features give the i-LIMB a functionality that enhances the patient’s everyday life.

Patients can choose between a number of cosmetic gloves, including amazingly lifelike skins that blend in naturally with the rest of the body.  The i-LIMB also has a modular construction that allows each finger to be detached by removing one screw.  This way, a digit needing service can be quickly swapped out for a new one, rather than leaving the patient without their prosthetic while it’s being serviced.   The i-LIMB currently costs about $18,000, and is being used by over 600 patients.  More information can be found at the Touch Bionics website.

Check out the i-LIMB in action, as reported by Voice of America:

So what’s next for Touch Bionics?  “We are shortly to release our lower profile i-LIMB Hand which is more appropriate for female and smaller male users,” says Phil Newman, Director of Marketing.  The company is also developing a product for patients missing individual fingers.  “Our next big focus is ProDigits – replacement fingers.  This is a technology for a much larger patient population which has never had a powered finger option before.  We are very excited about this and have a significant number of trial fittings in play.”

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Bionic Arm Controlled By Patient’s Own Thoughts

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by Keith Kleiner on February 13th, 2009

Last year we reported about the latest efforts to create the next generation in prosthetic arms.  Without a doubt the most exciting feature being developed for this new generation of arms is their ability to interface directly with the patient’s brain, allowing the patients to operate the arm simply by thinking.  Today the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) has announced that it has made significant progress in making these brain controlled prosthetic arms a reality.

The major advance behind these prosthetic arms is a surgical procedure called Targeted Muscle Reinnervation (TMR) that reassigns the nerves that once controlled the patient’s arm and hand to the patient’s pectoral muscles.  Hand and arm signals from the patients brain can then travel into the pectoral muscle and be fed into a computer, which converts the signals into inputs for the prosthetic arm.  This transfer of brain intentions into signals that can control a robotic device is known as Brain Computer Interfacing, or BCI.

Creating the ultimate prosthetic arm is a daunting challenge, requiring an interdisciplinary collaboration across many fields to achieve success.  The BCI advances used in this prosthetic arm would be useless without accompanying advances in robotic arm agility and function present in the project’s DEKA robotic arm.  We reported on the DEKA arm last year.

See the prosthetic arm in action in the video below.  Remember, this arm is being completely controlled by the patient’s thoughts.  Note the electrodes on the pectoral muscle where the brain’s signals have been surgically re-routed for capture: