Open-Source Prosthetics

D H NG writes "Wired News has a story about the non-profit Open Prosthetics Project. The organization was founded last year by Jonathan Kuniholm, a graduate student in biomedical engineering at Duke University who lost his arm below the elbow in Iraq. Open Prosthetics Project applies the ethical and intellectual property foundation of open-source software to the task of building better artificial limbs. So far, the project has produced a 'handful' of useful homebrew prosthetic hacks, and is closing in on a solution that would dramatically improve the functionality of the common hook device."

Comments

Moving arm - From Jesse to now

[From A Far Away Land]

Just last week I heard amazing news.
Bionic Arm.

It's really important that almost anyone could obtain this independence restoring medical device should they need one. Open Source ought to help with that, since I can just see some company trying to own a part and charging $5000 for a chip that you could get for $5 in Hong Kong.

It's a pretty complicated situation

[technoextreme]

The main problem is twofold. The human hand is complicated and we dam well lack any decent actuators. The human hand has a lot of degrees of freedoms. Our fingers can move a remarkable amount of ways. Now you have to realize that there aren't any actuators that can operate like muslces in small spaces without either taking up space or be bulky. Anyway the solution isn't going to come from a robotics person but a materials science.

Re:It's a pretty complicated situation

[RsG]

Now you have to realize that there aren't any actuators that can operate like muslces in small spaces without either taking up space or be bulky.

What about electroactive polymers? I mean if you want to talk about materials engineering in prosthetics, then it makes sense to look for a solution that's similar to what we already use (namely, muscles). You might even be able to duplicate the overall shape of the hand using a mix of these polymers as "muscle", and some other material as "bone".

Admittedly, it might be neccessary to have an external battery pack to save space inside the artificial hand (since human muscles use metabolic energy, and we can't use that to power prosthetics yet), but that doesn't need to be in the same general area - a belt pack with a power cord up your sleve would do the trick and save on space.

Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroactive_polymer s