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| Science & Technology |
| Video: New prosthetic arm for veterans |
| 2008-04-11 |
| Inventor Dean Kamen previews the extraordinary prosthetic arm he's developing at the request of the Department of Defense, to help the 1,600 "kids" who've come back from Iraq without an arm (and the two dozen who've lost both arms). Video at link. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #2 FOX NEWS this AM was also reporting on prosthetic dev + applics for RUSS-UKRAINIAN KIDS AFFECTED WID ASSOR BIRTH DEFECTS vv CHERNOBYL INCIDENT. DISNEY WORLD + Pizza afterwards. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-04-11 19:54 |
| #1 Prosthetic limbs are frustrating precisely because there are several parallel approaches to making them that seem to be blissfully unaware of each other. Their developers don't seem to be able to surf the Internet to see what each other are doing. For example, there are two kinds of "muscles" that show great promise. Air pressure tubes that give smooth, controlled and gentle motion; and hydrogen peroxide cylinders that give powerful, strong and fast motion. If they would just combine the two, it would create a musculature that would not only replicate a real limb, but would actually be stronger than a real limb. Not only that, but the air pressure tube muscles can even, to some degree, be used to provide pressure data back to the user's brain. That is, if the user grabbed a ball, the pressure of grabbing it would be translated back into a feeling of grabbing transmitted to their brain. But this is the "simple" part of the machine. The complex part is making a microprocessor "brain" for the arm, and a functional interface with the nervous system. Think a "snap on" prosthesis, a connector. The stump of the arm or leg would have a connector cap firmly affixed to the bone, with wire-to-nerve connections. Interestingly, the wires would just give little electrical shocks to the nerves--the user's brain would retrain itself to interpret and associate these shocks with particular things, such as a "feeling of grabbing". This has already been proven to happen naturally. So then, all the user has to do is "plug in" their prosthesis to the connector. Plug and play. The microprocessor "brain" of the prosthesis is mostly a diagnostic tool, but it also translates the signals sent from the brain to the nerves and converted to tiny electrical impulses. It is likely that the prosthesis would use audio signals to inform the user of the need to replenish its peroxide or fuel cell power supply, probably run with propane. It might also use its audio to help the user gauge their muscle use. For example a low, soft tone for a gentle muscular action, and a higher, louder tone for a stronger action. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-04-11 11:03 |