Pistorius narrowly missed qualifying for the 2008 Olympics when his 400m time was just a little shy of the mark. His July 19th run at Ligano, Italy came in at just 45.07 seconds, a personal best and well under (competitively speaking) the 45.25 qualifying time. Here’s his historic run. I love how happy his competitors are to see him succeed:

Since his bid to join the South African 2008 Olympic team, Pistorius has garnered the critique of many around the world who feel his prosthetics give him an unfair advantage. He was first denied, then allowed to try for the team. You can see why some would want to bar Pistorius from competing. The Cheetah Flex Foot carbon fiber devices are designed to absorb shock and transfer energy into forward momentum…but so are human lower legs and feet. Considering that Pistorius has fewer muscles than other racers and no sensation in his contact surface, I think he’s overcoming disadvantages, not resting on technology to do work for him. Watch the following two brief documentaries, the first a shorter clip developed for Nike, the second a 10 minute story by Al Jazeera English, and decide for yourself whether the magic is in the runner or the legs:

Despite the controversy around his legs, or perhaps because of it, Pistorius has been the subject of several successful ad campaigns. His determination has helped sell Nike products, and even Amen cologne. I don’t understand why anyone would want to smell like a sprinter, but I do get the appeal behind having Pistorius in these ads. The man looks like a jet fighter during take off – check it out:

While Pistorius is undoubtedly a great athlete, it’s the technological and social changes he represents that may have the deeper impact on our world. Amputees with phenomenal athletic skill can compete with able-bodied athletes of the highest caliber, and they are cheered and lauded as much as they are challenged by detractors. That’s the reality of today, and I wonder what it bodes for tomorrow. Ossur will continue to make improvements on their lower limb prosthetics, and we’ve already seen other developers create powered synthetic ankles and feet. How many years until such devices are clearly conferring an advantage to those who wear them? How powerful would prostheses need to be before able bodied humans wanted to upgrade themselves?

The media cheer around Pistorius isn’t just a retelling of the standard “overcoming adversity” Olympic human interest story, it’s a sign that many people are beginning to accept a slightly wider definition of humanity. Sure, Pistorius has synthetic legs, but he’s all athlete. His mechanical hybridization is simply part of his specialness. He’s “The Blade Runner”. I can’t wait for him to compete as an equal in the 2011 World Championships and the 2012 Olympics.

But honestly, I really can’t wait until some prosthesis wearing athlete soars past “equality” and starts to compete on a level all of their own.

Can’t get enough of The Blade Runner? Check out more great pics below!

[image credits: OscarPistorius.com (ads as indicated), Elian Palsson/Coda.coza]
[video credits: Great121ful, Nike, Al Jazeera English, Amen]
[source: Oscar Pistorius, Ossur]

Bebionic is available this month for $11000.

RSLSteeper, creator of the Bebionic artificial hand, has just announced that the hand will be offered at a price of $11,000 (€9000) around the world. Amputees control the prosthetic limb using my-oelectric sensors that read signals on the surface of the skin from residual muscle. To the outside observer it looks like you are moving the hand with your thoughts. This advanced system typically allows you to start using the new limb immediately and get comfortable with it in a few days. While Bebionic is not the only myo-electric hand on the market, it does seem to be the least expensive. That may lead to many amputees choosing to adopt it when it goes on sale later this month. Check out the video below of the launch of Bebionic during the ISPO World Congress in May. Watch amputees completely new to the device try it out around 2:40!

RSLSteeper faces fierce competition from TouchBionics, the maker of the i-Limb Hand, which has been on the market for a few years, and comes with removable digits. As I mentioned when I first reviewed the Bebionic hand in February, the i-Limb is a very similar device, and both have the same four major grips that users can switch between (key, precision, pointer, power). Touch Bionics may have stepped out ahead last month with the release of the i-Limb Pulse, a new hand that allows for pulsing grips and a few other upgrades. However, the Bebionic’s price tag is a powerful advantage, and is about 35% less than i-Limb (~$17k USD at time of writing). Maybe RSLSteeper read the end of my latest article on their device?

We have to remember that most hand amputees still use traditional hook systems that haven’t really changed much since the 40s and that retail for $500 or so. A big reason is that (except for veterans) most amputees can’t get enough money from their insurance agencies to cover expensive prosthetics. $11,000 still isn’t cheap, but it’s a big step in the right direction. Though it would be nice if the fancy synthetic skin covering (available in 19 shades of humanity) was included in that price instead of an additional $600. In any case, major kudos to RSLSteeper for getting a top of the line myo-electric hand closer to fitting in the budget of the average family.

My accolades, however, are notoriously fickle. I would gladly praise Touch Bionics or any other company that can get a myo-electric hand to the market for less than $10k. So keep up the competition, please! Eventually we may see prosthetic hands directly wired into the nervous system, but until we do myo-electrics are still the most advanced systems out there. Not as good as a natural hand, but they come pretty close. Check out the Bebionic in action in the promo video below (apologies for using it for a third time).

*UPDATE: The Bebionic hand will be offered through SPS in the United States, though a USA branch of RSLSteeper will be opening in San Antonion, Texas later this month.

[screen capture and video credit: Bebionic/Mark Hunter]
[source: RSL Steeper press release]

Dean Kamen shares moving stories about his development of prosthetic arms for veterans.

Thousands lose their arms every year to accidents, disease, and war. For centuries the best technology they were offered was a hook on a stick. Now Dean Kamen wants to give them much, much more. In his impassioned speech from  TEDMED he shows us the amazing story of people who have lost part of themselves but who now have hope on the horizon. You have to see this video! Kamen’s research firm, Deka, has been working tirelessly to develop a prosthetic arm for DARPA, affectionately dubbed the Luke Arm after the Star Wars character. The progress he and his team have made – clinical trials and five active participants starting just 15 months after inception – is incredible. Yet it is the amputees, the ultimate recipients of his work, that have grabbed Kamen’s admiration and dedication. Listen to him explain why in the video below.

There’s no doubt that Dean Kamen is a rock star of technology. He has 440+ patents, he invented the Segway, and is the founder of FIRST. Still, I was surprised to hear about the confidence DARPA had in his abilities. They wanted a hand that could pick up a grape or raisin (3:23 in the video) that weighed less than 9 lbs, and was completely self contained. And they wanted in less than 2 years (5:40)! Kamen gave them a working prototype in one. You can see the Luke Arm in action starting at 8:15, with the grape test at 9:05. The focus of the talk, however, were the experiences Kamen shared with veterans at Walter Reed (10:00) and other locations, including a quadruple amputee (13:38), and a crowd of 3500 soldiers and family members (15:20).

To be honest, I tend to avoid impassioned speeches. I’m more of a cold hard facts kind of guy. I must admit though, that Kamen’s plea for funding veterans’ prostheses hit home. We should be spending more money and devoting more research to getting upper body artificial arms out of the dark ages. However, I would extend Kamen’s plea to include all amputees everywhere. Prosthetic projects should begin with veterans (that’s where the money and passion is) but they need to extend to everyone who has lost a limb. Lower body prosthetics have already made huge leaps in improvement in the last decade. Artificial arms need to undergo a similar revolution. The Deka Luke Arm is a good contender to make it happen, but there are other artificial arms with different (perhaps even better) approaches. With adequate funding each of these projects could help us find the next generation of arms and hands that help amputees recover the capabilities they have lost. I agree with Kamen’s conclusion that we should continue such research until non-amputees are jealous of the artificial limbs we can provide. Heh…now that I think about it, why stop there?

[screen capture and video credit: TEDMED]
[source: TEDMED, Deka]

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?

In the following video highlighting BeBioinic’s four grips, notice how the silicone skin looks more life-like at 0:45 than at 1:06. Not sure if this is an artifact of lighting and camera angle.

Prosthetics are a very exciting field for Singularity Hub because they highlight how man and machine can work together in a very physical and personal way. Unfortunately, the BeBionic hand isn’t showing us a lot that is new. Yes, this is the first powered wrist that we’ve seen, and it has an impressive range of motion (135 ° rotation, 35° flexion/extension). The hand itself, however, seems very similar to the i-Limb hand and digits we’ve reviewed before. Myo-electric sensors are certainly cool, but, again, we’ve seen those with Deka and other prosthesis projects. RSL Steeper is including some in-house designed software to let each individual custom their controls via wireless connection to a computer. That’s a nice innovation, but combined with the four grip types I don’t think that will provide a range of control that greatly exceeds the other prostheses on the market.

And I can’t help looking at these hands and wondering if they aren’t all following a dead end. Myo-electrics probably allow for a more intuitive method for control than foot pedals or shoulder flexing. Yet, we’ve already seen projects that hope to directly integrate nerves into the artificial limb. Direct nerve integration also provides the possibility for haptics – having the user feel what the limb feels. Those projects are likely many years from completion, but I think they’re where prostheses will ultimately end up.

Considering costs, availability, and setup requirements (connecting directly to nerves requires surgery), it’s likely that all of these prostheses types will exist on the market simultaneously. Users will have to choose between traditional “hook” hands, pedal/pressure controls, myo-electrics, and nerve integrated limbs depending on their budget, etc. It’s hard to know which will provide the greatest amount of utility per dollar. However, I would think that, all things being equal, those looking to replicate a missing limb would naturally gravitate towards the hands that could actually provide feedback.

Still, it’s much too early to decide which prosthetic hand will win the hearts of its users. Again, a lot probably rests on which insurance providers will cover which prosthetics. What we really need is a side by side comparison of all the different upper body limb replacement systems so that potential customers can see the relative speed, power, and precision of each choice. The good news is that as more companies compete to provide these technologies the costs of these devices may drop down to where they are more affordable to amputees. After all, you can build the coolest prosthetic in the world, but it won’t matter unless people get to use it.

[image and video credit RSL Steeper and BeBionic]

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.

PowerFoot One is advanced in its sensing as well as its motion. Three on board processors and 12 sensors allow the limb to make around 500 adjustments each second. These measurements are combined with a comprehensive library of known patterns of human foot movements. In effect, the PowerFoot One knows how you’re going to move before you have time to think about it. It’s not quite the artificial intelligence we’ve seen in other lower limb devices, but unlike the Proprio Foot from Ossur, the PowerFoot One is providing enough force to really augment movement, not just adjusting its position to match your gait. It’s very impressive.

The Department of Defense seems to agree. They’re interested in the PowerFoot One as a possible prosthetic for injured soldiers. In fact, a good portion of iWalk’s $10+ million startup capital was funded by the Veteran Administration and the US Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC).

But if there is one driving force behind PowerFoot One it’s the limb’s developer and first user, Prof. Hugh Herr of MIT. He’s the head of the University’s Biomechatronics group and a double leg amputee himself. His work has been incorporated into devices for prosthetic’s leader Ossur, and he was one of the founders of iWalk. Herr’s story is very remarkable for its bravery and determination, but it’s his vision for the future that is really impressive. According to Forbes, Herr envisions the upcoming century as one that blurs the boundaries between man and machine. The prostheses for amputees today will become the universally sought after bionic limbs of tomorrow.

Before that happens, however, there’s a small matter of money. The PowerFoot One will cost users an unspecified amount in the low five figures. Similarly enabled lower limb devices we’ve seen before have similar expenses. Upper body bionic prosthetics, which continue to trail lower limb devices, are still experimental and can cost many tens of thousands of dollars. Veterans in the US could see great financial support from the VA for these limbs but most amputees simply won’t have the budget for them. Give that time, though. As with all forms of advancing technology, bionic limbs should experience falling costs even as technology improves. Devices like the PowerFoot One may be too expensive for many right now, but its successors will hopefully become universal options for those who have lost a foot. And one day for those who still have their foot but want to improve it.

Often when discussing medical technology, Singularity Hub is asked about specific means for acquisition or participation in clinical trials. If you are an amputee interested in trying PowerFoot One or would like more detailed information, please contact iWalk directly at their website.

[image credit: iWalk]

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.

Typically a mechanized prosthesis can handle one kind of input: pressure sensitive pads, electrical signals measured from the skin, or wires directly connected to nerves. Pro-Digits can be adapted to handle either of the first two inputs and Touch Bionics plans on eventually designing products that can handle the third. Myo-electric sensors measure nerve impulses through the skin. Basically, an amputee’s nervous system will still send commands to the missing limb and these sensors can detect those commands and use them to direct the artificial fingers.

As each prosthesis is different, and each patient has a different amputation, getting Pro-Digits to respond to myo-electric control can take some calibration. New patients shouldn’t expect to have the level of control demonstrated in the video right away. Touch Bionics does have software guided feedback to help train new users, and information is routed from the limb using Bluetooth. It would be awesome (and completely unlikely) to have Pro-Digits adapted to serve as a headset for a phone.

One of the really remarkable features of Pro-Digits is that they can be cosmetically matched to the rest of your body. Using a life-like surface (called “LivingSkin”) Touch Bionics will shape a prosthesis so that it can closely resemble a natural hand. Don’t believe it could pass in public? The pictures of customized i-Limb hands will change your mind.

It took me a few seconds to recognize the i-Limb on the right.

I guess the i-Limb is the one on top?

Touch Bionics estimates that there are 52,000 Europeans who may be a match for Pro-Digits, and more than 1.2 million such individuals worldwide. That’s a lot of bionic fingers to be made. Each prosthesis is likely to have a different price tag (depending on the exact form it takes) but the i-Limb retails for around $18k (USD). That’s outside of the budget of many individuals, especially in countries where insurance companies do not provide prosthesis coverage (the US being one of them). My big hope is that as motors, sensors, and electronics continue to miniaturize and reduce in price, prosthetics will come down in costs. It will likely take many years, but I suspect that eventually we will see more mechanized prosthesis in use around the world. Or, considering how well Pro-Digits can blend in, maybe we won’t notice them at all.

[photo and video credit: Touch Bionics]

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?

Well, largely I think the Luke Arm is winning because it is already able to start clinical trials, has Dean Kamen attached to the project, and is a remarkable piece of machinery. No doubt, the Luke Arm performs very well. It’s customizable, modular, and robust. At only 8 lbs (3.6 kg), it contains electric motors that give it 18 degrees of freedom (the human arm has 22) and pressure control. A vibrating device, called a tactor, gives the user feedback sensation that allows him or her to stop the Luke Arm before it crushes an object. In the video you can see how the device is gentle and sensitive enough to pick up a grape.

As mentioned, the Luke Arm is part of DARPA’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics program. Deka received close to $18 million for the development of its device, but $30.4 million went to John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab for an alternate prosthetic that uses myoelectric sensors. That device, and APL researcher Jonathan Kuniholm, is shown towards the end of the 60 Minutes segment.

DARPA is hedging it’s bets, spreading money around to see which projects will bear fruit. Smart idea. The Luke Arm’s current trial utilizes the control pads we discussed earlier, but Kamen isn’t ruling out the use of myoelectric sensors in the future. Between the APL and Deka, DARPA is bound to get at least one fieldable prosthetic very soon.

But if you’re not a veteran, neither DARPA project may really help you much. The Luke Arm is slated to cost $100,000+, and a similar price is likely for the APL limb. That’s well beyond the means of most amputees if they do not have the insurance coverage provided by the Veteran’s Administration. The i-Limb is offered at a cheaper price (near $18,000) and is already being tested by 600 users. As most amputees are not veterans, I think that the Luke Arm has a good chance of being priced out of a large market share.

Which is why I was very interested in Jonathan Kuniholm’s Open Prosthetics project. The same biomedical engineer working at APL (on the DARPA grant) is an advocate of open source solutions and hopes that a cheap and reliable alternative could be provided for those without the means to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Kuniholm gave an amazingly frank and thought-provoking interview to NPR’s Fresh Air earlier in the month. He discussed the budget limitations of amputees, the bias non-amputees have on appearance over function, and the media’s preference for hyperbolic stories (around 11:02). Give it a listen:

After hearing Kuniholm criticize the media for telling just two versions of technology stories (“this device is amazing, it’s going to change everything” or “this device is a horrible waste of money”) I am inclined to give a very measured outlook on the future of prosthetics. The Luke Arm is a great piece of machinery, and it’s likely to be ready soon, but it could be too costly to own and too difficult to operate. Myoelectric devices could offer some amazing possibilities, but they aren’t here yet. Surgically augmented devices, like the Smart Hand, could offer realistic feedback via nerve connections and completely outperform any other limb. But those devices are years from completion. The bottom line is that the first commercially available next-generation upper body prosthetic could be the Luke Arm, but it is certainly not going to be the last. Whichever device eventually sets the standard for limb replacement will have to be adaptable, affordable, and above all functional. May the best hand win.

[photo credit: IEEE Spectrum]
[video credit: 60 minutes via CNET]
[audio credit: NPR Fresh Air]

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.

Phantom limb syndrome is the sensation amputees have that their missing body part is still there. The brain has remained open to receiving input from those nerves although they were cut off long ago. Likewise, impulses from the brain to control the missing limb still travel down the neurons towards the sight of amputation. Scientists can use electronic sensors to pick up the control signals and relay them to a mechanical device. We’ve seen this technology used in the HAL exoskeleton from Cyberdyne, and in the i-Limb prostheses. Smart Hand is unique because it also takes advantage of those phantom limb pathways still being open. Doctors connect the sensors in the hand to the nerves in the stump of the arm. Now, patients can feel as well as control an artificial limb.

The Old You…Maybe Better?

The goal of the Smart Hand project is to create a replacement limb that is as near to identical to the lost one as possible. This means creating a prosthesis that functions and relays sensory input like a normal biological hand. In both objectives, the Smart Hand is far from ultimate success. Four motors, though providing an impressive range of motion, do not have the full degrees of freedom, nor the variation in applied strength that a human hand has. Likewise, it is amazing that the forty sensors can communicate with the human brain at all, but they do not provide nearly as much sensation as the millions of nerves in your biological hand. Yet, as mentioned in the video, the current Smart Hand prototype represents more than ten years of dedicated work.

I only point out the current limitations of Smart Hand to better highlight its enormous potential. Robin af Ekenstam (the patient in the video) can pick up objects, and can feel the fingertips of the prosthesis even at this stage of development. It is clear from his involvement in this project that this level of capability is well worth the time and effort involved. In other words, an imperfect Smart Hand is still a very desirable hand, and can perform remarkable tasks. What happens as Smart Hand gets even better?

The number of scientists dedicated to answering that question is rather astounding. In the Smart Hand project we see the work primarily of Lund University in Sweden and the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy, but contributors include researchers in Denmark, Israel, Ireland, and Iceland. We’ve seen many other successful prosthetic companies including i-Limb, DEKA, and Ossur. A good number of robotic hand projects work in parallel with prostheses research, including the gentle SDM robotic hand we recently discussed. On the frontier of nerve-machine connectivity are projects like Braingate, which directly connect motor nerves to computers.

Clearly, there is an abundance of resources being directed at all angles of this research coming from many different regions and fields of expertise. When we consider these resources we can rest assured that although it has taken ten years to give us the current version of Smart Hand, it will take much less time to make large improvements upon the technology. Whether or not those improvements occur in this project, or another, it is likely that prosthetic work could see some sort of exponential growth in the upcoming years.

Which means that sooner than we may think, those suffering from missing limbs may be able to heal themselves to a degree beyond their expectation. In the next several years, perhaps decades, prostheses may come to match our natural bodies in most meaningful ways.

Beyond that, of course, sits the realm of abject speculation, but if artificial limbs will one day match the human ones, there’s no reason they couldn’t be further improved. We would then see bionic limbs, or perhaps entirely bionic bodies, which exceed human limitations. Could these mechanical bodies be accepted as authentically human? Already the Olympics have decided that some athletes with prostheses have an unfair advantage and are ineligible to compete. In the years to come we will see how society at large reacts when “good enough” becomes “good as new” and finally “better than ever”.

[photo credit: Smart Hand Project]

[video credit: BBC News]