Futurist Foresight

Bionic prosthetics that can be controlled via a mobile app.

futurescope:

Bionic App

via NewScientist:

The powered thumb is controlled by signals from the user’s arm muscles or - in a first for upper limb prostheses - via a smartphone app: a tap of the screen and the hand automatically arranges itself into a preset grip. The thumb can move into 24 different positions and new, extra-sensitive fingertip electrodes also give improved dexterity.

“Powered thumb rotation, combined with the mobile app and quick access to all these new grips, gives me natural hand function that I never imagined would be possible,” says Bertolt Meyer, who wears one of the new hands.

The app makes it easy to configure presets by group, such as “work”, which includes positions ready for typing, handling documents or using a mouse. The app also includes diagnostic tools and training modes for new users.

[read more] [touch bionics] [Image: Murdoch Ferguson/Ferguson Imaging]

Bionics with a sense of touch! What a breakthrough for cybernetics!

neurosciencestuff:

A sensational breakthrough: the first bionic hand that can feel

The first bionic hand that allows an amputee to feel what they are touching will be transplanted later this year in a pioneering operation that could introduce a new generation of artificial limbs with sensory perception.

The patient is an unnamed man in his 20s living in Rome who lost the lower part of his arm following an accident, said Silvestro Micera of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

The wiring of his new bionic hand will be connected to the patient’s nervous system with the hope that the man will be able to control the movements of the hand as well as receiving touch signals from the hand’s skin sensors.

Dr Micera said that the hand will be attached directly to the patient’s nervous system via electrodes clipped onto two of the arm’s main nerves, the median and the ulnar nerves.

This should allow the man to control the hand by his thoughts, as well as receiving sensory signals to his brain from the hand’s sensors. It will effectively provide a fast, bidirectional flow of information between the man’s nervous system and the prosthetic hand.

“This is real progress, real hope for amputees. It will be the first prosthetic that will provide real-time sensory feedback for grasping,” Dr Micera said.

“It is clear that the more sensory feeling an amputee has, the more likely you will get full acceptance of that limb,” he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston.

“We could be on the cusp of providing new and more effective clinical solutions to amputees in the next year,” he said.

(via fuckyeahrobots)