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`Bionic' Arm Brings Back Sense of Touch
bdcrazy writes "Two way communication with prosthetic devices allows man who lost both arms in an accident to feel hot and cold, to sense objects and to actually move the prosthetic device to pick things up and put them down.
"
It is well and good until the arms short circuit and try to kill him...
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
...to robot pricking each finger and palm, one by one, as the patient says "ow!" and then wrapping the prosthetic arm in a black glove...
The next step is finding out that Darth Vader is your daddy.
/. ++
These work using a peltier junction. For those not "in-the-know", peltier junctions are basically chunks of metal that push heat to one side when you run current through them one way, and the other side when you run current through them the other way. This provides a cold, and a hot side that can be varied very quickly from cold to hot, by changing the amount and direction of the current. They are very inefficient though, requiring a lot of current that is generated as excess heat overall. These are commonly used to cool processor cores down, pushing more heat into the heatsink, but keeping the core cooler than it would be with just a heatsink.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Would the user be able to sense that his arm is in liquid-hot MAAGMAAA before it melted?
This reminds me of the old joke about the voice-actuated artificial arm.
They finally attach one to an armless human patient and it goes like this.
The guy says, "Arm, scratch my nose". And the arm does it.
"Amazing!", says the guy.
"Arm, sign my name." The arm does it.
This continues for quite a while. Finally when the guy's alone.
He says, "Arm, take off my pants." The arm complies.
He looks at the arm, and then at his penis and says, "OK arm, jerk it off!"
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
So far it's only cost about $100,000, which is far cheaper than the $6,000,000 that was originally estimated. Maybe we'll get a little closer to that price once another arm is added, and some legs and a head and body...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
"We can rebuild him. We have the technology.
We have the capability to make the world's first Bionic man.
Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before.
Better . . . stronger . . . faster."
"I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged"
Anybody want to take bets on how long it takes for a Linux dist. to be built for it?
I keep wondering if advances in prothetics will slow research into regrowing limbs. Once the replacement becomes better than the real thing, will people trade in their real arms for fake ones?
Masturbating without a sense of touch is way better though, it doesn't feel like you're doing it... Not that I'd know! :P
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Rewired, amputee lifts arm with mind
On Wednesday, when Kuiken touched a spot on Sullivan's chest, Sullivan said: "Oh, that's right between the finger and thumb on the back side of the hand."
If Kuiken touches one of Sullivan's prosthetic fingers, Sullivan can feel it and say which finger it is.
Wow. I just know he is glad he can still play the "pull my finger" game with his grandkids.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
More like one of those instants where your brain, while processing the signals you've just sent to your appendages, says to itself:
Fuck. This guy's an idiot.
I've done stupid things with electricty. Similar things. Not once, but twice, I've touched both metal ends of a Flourescent light tube while the light was on. Once while a box cutter was in my hand, touching the metal end of one of the lights. Not me showing off being an idiot, just having one of those beautiful moments where Darwin should have taken over. My hands got moving faster than my mind could slow them down.
This guy was probably up on a cherry picker. His weight shifted, a gust of wind came along, etc and as he started to fall his insticts yelled:
GRAB SOMETHING!
meanwhile his mind, not really paying attention sees what's happening and says:
Nono don't grab th.....nevermind.
Yeah, the guy probably screwed up somewhere down the line but Shit will invariably, consistently, and always, Happen.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I don't mean to sound like an insentive asshole
You definitely should consider being fitted with a prosthetic asshole that can feel hot and cold and sense objects.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"For some reason his right arm is showing more wear than the left," said Dr. Todd Kuiken. "Especially around the fingers and palm. We're not sure what's up with that."
Where I did my electronics engineering apprenticeship, we had a guy who had suffered a similar accident. His whole nervous system was shot to pieces and he had to wear tinted glasses because his eyes became sensitive to light. He had two claws for arms...and worked as a draughtsman in the drawing office!
One day he was in front of me at a drinks vending machine and he asked me to put the coins in for him as this was about the only thing he couldn't do with his claws. He punched the buttons and out came a cup of coffee. Just as he went to pick it up, the plastic 'splash door' on the front of the cup area (which was stuck up) came down and knocked the cup, spilling coffee over his claw.
"Damn", he said, "but at least I didn't get burned!".
He was a really nice guy.
AT&ROFLMAO