Students Create Thought-Controlled Prosthetic Arm

Zothecula writes "Two undergraduate students from Toronto's Ryerson University have created a prosthetic arm that is controlled by its wearer's brain signals, and powered by compressed air. Not only is the Artificial Muscle-Operated (AMO) Arm said to offer a greater range of movement than traditional prostheses, but it also doesn't require the amputee to undergo invasive surgery, is easy to learn to use, and it is relatively inexpensive to make."

Comments

Looks great

[MichaelSmith]

The article discusses other projects they are looking at. Artificial lungs and way of bypassing spinal cord injuries. Its the sort of pragmatic engineering we should see more of in medicine. I hope they can deliver.

How long before this repaces keybord/mouse

[nzac]

It can't be too much longer before you can get the cost down to the point high end users can afford it.

If they can make the learning fast enough and distinguish between different letters then sometime in the next 20 years you will be buying a cap with your tablet or other mobile device.

Re:How long before this repaces keybord/mouse

[nzac]

While I see zero feedback as issue for these kinds of devices I don't see the 'the strangers' relevance to IO input.

My thinking is if you could for the easy case input hex by selectively contacting four fingers of one hand and turn the motor function of the hand of with a switch. You could also expand this to ternary input by using contacting and extending allowing full ASCII.

I do see a lot of risk to confusing the brain about normal mussel use if not done properly.

Re:How long before this repaces keybord/mouse

[andrea.sartori]

I do see a lot of risk to confusing the brain about normal mussel use if not done properly.

These hate-fueled, misleading claims made by oyster producer shills must be stopped! Mussel is a perfectly healty and safe food!!!1

I'm not sure about this.

[Tigger's Pet]

I would all depend on what level of the thought process they have it operating. Would the user have to actively think "I'll move it up, down, away, towards etc", in which case it would be less intuitive and easy than the nerve- or muscle-controlled ones. If the arm was set to just work on 'impulse' type thoughts, then how long before peoples arms start grabbing women by the arse just coz the user had a dirty thought - would they be able to be held responsible in law for the action of their arm?
As for the Canadians doing this, well done. DARPA have been working on this for a long time now;-
http://www.neurotechreports.com/pages/darpaprosthetics.html
http://singularityhub.com/2010/08/03/mind-controlled-artificial-arm-begins-the-first-human-testing/

What?

[a_hanso]

No "CANADIAN students create thought controlled prosthetic arm"?

Disclaimer: Big fan of Canada. I'm joking and I'm drunk.

Dodgy article

[EdZ]

Hard to tell whether this is anything new or not when the article makes such glaring errors as:

While some traditional prosthetic arms move via myoelectric motors and relays

Myoelectrics involves sensing muscle movements by the electric fields generated, and is nothing to do with a type of electric motor. I doubt if anyone has used a relay in a prosthetic limb for at least a decade.
If they really just using an EEG headband to control the arm, it's going to have very low controlled dexterity, and extremely slow response.

Re:Dodgy article

[VolciMaster]

Hard to tell whether this is anything new or not when the article makes such glaring errors as:

While some traditional prosthetic arms move via myoelectric motors and relays

Myoelectrics involves sensing muscle movements by the electric fields generated, and is nothing to do with a type of electric motor. I doubt if anyone has used a relay in a prosthetic limb for at least a decade. .

So it's not a "glaring error" at all - if they were used previously, then likely many of those devices are still in operation, so it's a true statement.

Sounds like the 3-armed monkey

[Woogiemonger]

In this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_root_wolpe_it_s_time_to_question_bio_engineering.html ... the speaker details an experiment where they had a robotic arm respond to the brain signals a monkey has when it moves one of its arms. The monkey realized intuitively how it's controlled and eventually was able to move the arm without moving its real arm, effectively giving the monkey three working arms. Might've been an ape -- I forget.