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A New Robotic Hand That Can "Feel"
Dyne09 writes "The BBC is running a video report about a group of Swiss and Italian scientists who have created the 'Smart Hand,' a robotic hand with forty sensors that 'connect directly to the brain.' Though fuzzy on the details, the report says the hand provides sensor feedback to a willing test subject, a 22-year-old man who lost his hand to cancer three years ago. How long until we have access to Star Wars-esque robotic limbs?"
Telepresenceporn
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Swedish and Italian
So many new articles in the past weeks about new arms, legs, hearts (maybe/hopefully )etc, at what point will the concept of death change ? How much time do we have before all our parts can be replaced and we can be immortal overloads eating junk food all day.
I have to wonder what drama will be left for movies in a couple decades from now if imagination is becoming a reality.
Well, I still don't have my warp drive. There's probably still a few other sources of material out there. I think we're safe for a few thousand more years ;-).
Good.
I regret that I only have one mod point to give per post.
What, you expected him to read the summary too?
Eventually it may be possible that the brain itself could be replaced with an artificial unit (and our conciousness "Transeferred"). At that point though I'd say that you wouldn't really have the same person left. Just a simulation of that person. Or as Dr. Bashir put it in one episode of DS9 (Star Trek had artificial brains):
Nerys, if I remove the rest of his brain... put a machine in its place... he may look like Bareil... and he may even talk like Bareil... but it won't be Bareil. The "spark of life" will be gone. He'll be dead. And I'll be the one who killed him.
Indeed if we ever moved to that point, there would be no need for the rest of the artificial organs. Most of that stuff serves one ultimate goal - keep the brain running. If the brain itself were powerable by electricity then it would make sense to eliminate the other inefficient biological parts and just plug the new artificial brain into a completely artificial body.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
This technology is only a subset of the prosthetic arm - 'Luke' - developed by Dean Kamen's company. The prosthetic arm is controlled directly by the user's brain as well and allows a lot more complexity compared to the hand shown here. Also, Luke is being built as a modular system where you only use the parts of the arm that you need - if you don't need the upper arm, you can use just the hand and lower arm, and so forth.
More details below:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/05/dean-kamens-rob/
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/dean-kamens-luke-arm-prosthesis-readies-for-clinical-trials/2
http://blog.ted.com/2008/02/dean_kamens_arm.php
PS: For those who can't place the name, Dean Kamen is the inventor of Segway, among other things.
Cancer below the elbow or below the knee is medically unheard of ...
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
Does anyone know why is this story tagged as porn?
The future (post 2000) isn't as epic as was promised, but it is nice to see that some things they promised are actually coming through. Losing ones arms or legs will still suck but you can look forward to being able to live without needing assistance for every little thing. The tech is still in it's infancy, i'm sure that down the line the people with prosthetic limbs will be moving among us without us having a clue!
When we more fully understand and modify humans through genetics, etc., it will make these mechanics look like stone spears do today.
Just imagine if we could grow a new limb with some daily therapy in only a few months; or if humans were Radiation Hardened at the cellular level from birth.
My grandfather has an old axe. It's had 3 new handles, and 2 new heads ...
I must say, I was intrigued by your question, but then I realized you were talking about computer mice.. =/
The brain's ability to adapt to enormous change in the manner of input it's receiving is incredible. It will be very interesting to see how effectively the brain can adapt to interpreting the sensory signals from the new hand and control it. This seems like even more of a good idea now.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Is it not? In the hypothetical Star Trek universe, are people no longer the same person after Transportation (in which their matter is destroyed completely and rebuilt at a different time and location)? The only thing preventing use of Transport for cloning (of an exact duplicate) is, as far as I know, ethical rather than technological (since they've had accidents that have cloned people). If one person steps into one door, and two people step out the other, who's to say which is "you"? If a perfect mind transfer were possible, I think the question's moot. If we put Stephen Hawking in a brand new robotic body, I suspect he'd be just as brilliant.
If minds are information, it's not hard to imagine that, someday, technology will exist to allow us to make perfect copies -- just the way we now can with music. At (or before) that point, our whole concept of what it means to be a person will need to evolve. Accelerando delves into this in a more mindblowing and complete manner than I can. ;)
If you knew your current body were dying of cancer, and you could transfer your consciousness to a machine next to your body, after having done so I believe the consciousness in the machine would consider itself "you" even as it watched its former shell die. Copying before death would be ... confusing, at the least. I would love to see some chess grandmaster do it, though. ;)