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

Controlling An Artificial Hand With Your Thoughts (Video)

No Comments

by Aaron Saenz on December 10th, 2009
Pierpaolo Petruzziello uses his thoughts to control the Life Hand prosthetic which is directly wired to his nerves.

Pierpaolo Petruzziello uses his thoughts to control the Life Hand prosthetic which is directly wired to his nerves.

Scientists are becoming increasingly adept at creating machines that can successfully attach to your neurons. In the realm of prosthetics, the ultimate artificial hand is one that can accept commands directly from the user’s brain and transmit sensation back. At the Universita Campus Bio Medico in Rome, surgeons connected wires from the nerves of an amputee named Pierpaolo Petruzziello to an artificial limb called Life Hand. Over a month, Petruzziello was able to move the mechanic limb in gestures more complex than any previous device has accomplished. Researchers report that the Life Hand obeyed about 95% of the commands mentally sent by Petruzziello. This remarkable success was possible even though the hand itself was never implanted onto the patient. Check out the videos from the Associated Press and Discovery News after the break.

If the specifics of Life Hand are giving you a mild sense of deja vu, you’re not alone. In late October I reported on Smart Hand, a similar device tested in Sweden on a different young man – Robin af Ekenstam. The two projects are actually related. Both were part of a larger EU task force working on artificial limbs. If the Life Hand and Smart Hand look nearly identical, that shouldn’t be surprising either, considering that both were constructed at the Scuola Superiore di Sant’Anna in Italy. The largest difference between the two devices (besides the name) is that the Smart Hand is taking steps towards implantation, while the Life Hand is focusing on the complexity of gestures and reliability of signals to/from the device.

Read More

Prosthetic Smart Hand Lets Amputee Feel and Move Objects

8 Comments

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.
Read More

« Older Entries