The Future Is Here Today...Robots, Genetics, AI, Longevity, Singularity

BeBionic Artificial Hand and Wrist – Now With Kung-Fu Grip! (video)

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by Aaron Saenz on February 25th, 2010
BeBionic artificial hand and wrist

The BeBionic hand comes close to the real thing. It has four different kinds of grips and a silicone skin.

Judging by the latest promo videos, the BeBionic hand is out to kick more butt than…well, an artificial foot. Full of heavy rock licks, the BeBionic demo shows off the four grips (key, pinch, finger, and power) of its newest prosthetic hand and wrist. The system senses muscle signals on the skin of your residual limb to control its movements, a technique known in the field as myo-electric sensing. To match that life-like motion with a life-like appearance BeBionic also comes with a silicone covering in one of 19 possible shades of human skin and with customized finger nails. Produced by RSL Steeper, the BeBionic hand and wrist are set to debut (with pricing and availability details) in May at the Orthopadie Technik in Leipzig, Germany. You can check them out now in the videos below. Where’s the “rock-on” gesture grip when you need it?

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iWalk Presents World’s First Actively Powered Foot and Ankle

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by Aaron Saenz on January 20th, 2010
iWalk prosthetic foot

iWalk's PowerFoot One is the world's first actively powered foot and ankle prosthetic.

Someday soon, amputees will have more powerful limbs than those with their natural bodies. iWalk, a prosthetics company formed in 2006, is gearing up to provide the world’s first actively powered foot and ankle this year. Called the PowerFoot One, the prosthetic limb uses springs and a half pound lithium ion battery to provide human-like power. It gives the same push off the ground as a human foot, and can adjust to slopes, walking up and down steps, or hanging casually when you lounge in a chair. The PowerFoot One can even be adjusted using a Bluetooth enabled phone and (according to an interview in Forbes) will soon have an associated iPhone App. Along with lower limb prosthetics from other companies, the PowerFoot One is set to give amputees an ease of movement that’s nearly natural. Give iWalk enough time, and they’re likely to make it better than human.

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Custom Fit Bionic Fingers Work Like The Real Thing (Video)

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by Aaron Saenz on December 16th, 2009
Touch Bionics is moving forward with its prosthetic fingers. They have much of the same capability as the i-Limb, but customized to each amputee's unique physiology.

Touch Bionics is moving forward with its prosthetic fingers. They have much of the same capability as the i-Limb, but customized to each amputee's unique physiology.

In the world of prosthetics, there’s really no such thing as “one size fits all.” Back when we discussed the i-Limb from Touch Bionics, we mentioned that the Scottish company’s next big development would be bionic fingers. Well they’ve arrived. Pro-Digits are powered mechanical fingers which can be controlled by measuring electric signals from nerves using pads on the skin. Touch Bionics has fitted more than thirty patients with Pro-Digits devices, each uniquely built to correspond to differing levels of amputation. As with the i-Limb, the bionic fingers can detect objects as they close to prevent crushing something delicate and can be installed in different grips to help with tasks such as typing. Check out the Pro-Digits in action in the video below.

There’s been a ton of really exciting news about prosthetics this year. Besides i-Limb, we’ve seen artificial hands and arms from Deka, DARPA’s Prosthetics Revolution Program, and Smart Hand. Artificial intelligence in lower limb prostheses is also advancing at a wonderful pace. While each device has its own merits, Touch Bionics has geared i-Limb and Pro-Digits to be market ready and user friendly as soon as possible. There are already more than 600 users of i-Limb and it looks like Touch Bionics is trying to get Pro-Digits to enjoy the same popularity.

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Deka’s Luke Arm In Clinical Trials, Is it the Future of Prosthetics? (Video)

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by Aaron Saenz on December 1st, 2009
Deka's Luke Arm is in clinical trials. Will it find favor with amputees?

Deka's Luke Arm is in clinical trials. Will it find favor with amputees?

The future of prosthetics isn’t certain, and we’ve seen so many different next generation devices, it’s hard to know which will ultimately arise as the standard. For legs, there are spring like mechanical struts that can outperform their biological counterparts, and there are complex electronic knees and feet that contain narrow artificial intelligence. Prosthetic hands, however, haven’t evolved much in the past 60 years. But that’s about to change. We’ve seen many different robotic hands in development, and one of the most popular in the press has been Deka’s Luke Arm. Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway scooter and head of Deka, helped design the electronic arm to fit the needs and desires of modern amputees. The Luke Arm went into clinical trials this summer and could become the prosthetic limb of choice for US soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, despite the Luke Arm’s media presence (check out the 60 Minutes segment video after the break), I’m not certain it’s going to beat the competition.

For those who missed our first story on Deka’s Luke Arm, I should explain that it is controlled by pads under the feet and attached to shoulders muscles. Like a complex video game, users press on these pads to get the limb to perform desired actions. This is a robust system that allows for a precise level of control. It also takes a while to get used to. Competing prostheses, like i-Limb, use myoelectric sensors that can read nerve signals in muscles. Essentially, you think about moving your missing hand, and the prosthetic performs the action. The two approaches, joystick versus mind-control, seem grossly mismatched in the favor of the myoelectric sensors. How is the Deka arm staying competitive?

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Prosthetic Smart Hand Lets Amputee Feel and Move Objects

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by Aaron Saenz on October 21st, 2009
The Smart Hand allows its user to feel what it senses, allowing for precise control.

The Smart Hand allows its user to feel what it senses, allowing for precise control.

When Luke Skywalker has his hand cut off in The Empire Strikes Back, he simply has it replaced with a mechanical one that looks, moves, and feels like a real hand. Now, whether you have lost your limb to a lightsaber or a disease, there is a real world equivalent to Luke’s bionic fist: the Smart Hand. Developed by EU researchers, the Smart Hand is a complex prosthesis with four motors and forty sensors designed to provide realistic motion and sense to the user. That’s right, Smart Hand is the first device of its kind to send signals back to the wearer, allowing them to feel what they touch. The first time I saw this, it completely blew my mind. Take a look at the video from BBC News after the break.

Generally when we’ve discussed haptics (sense of touch interfaces), it has been in relation to remote access or telepresence robots. At once, the use of haptics in prostheses is both more intuitive and more intimate. The ability to create feeling extensions of one’s body has implications beyond the (not so) simple creation of life-like limbs. We could see bionic replacements that augment human physicality beyond the normal limits. These replacements, if accompanied by an advanced sense of touch, would have all the benefits of a natural part of your body and yet function better. Full body replacement, or rather body displacement, is the stuff of science fiction movies like Surrogates. Yet if we find a way to perfectly translate mechanical sensation to human sensation, there would be little technological obstruction to extending our consciousness outside our biological bodies.
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