Slashdot Mirror
Luke Prosthetic Arm Approved By FDA
necro81 writes: "The FDA today approved the Luke prosthetic arm for sale. The Luke Arm, created by Dean Kamen's DEKA R&D Corp., was a project initiated by DARPA to develop a prosthetic arm for wounded warriors more advanced than those previously available. The Arm can be configured for below-the-elbow, above-the-elbow, and shoulder-level amputees. The full arm has 10 powered degrees of freedom and has the look and weight of the arm it replaces. Through trials by DEKA and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, the Arm has been used by dozens of amputees for a total of many thousands of hours. Commercialization is still pending."
When I read about the idea of commercializing this product I thought to myself why should these types of gear be only for replacing limbs?
Would it be useful to have a third, fourth, or more arm attachments?
Could it open up new capacities for accomplishing manual tasks, for example?
Why should the amputees be the only ones who get cool toys?
Just how accurate is it? Will you be able to use the Force after installation? Will you still be able to install it after a lightsaber wound?
I thought slashdot was into 3d printed prosthetics without the high tech overhead.
After years of working at Segway (though not while Dean was around), I'd had no small exposure to his... ethos. And, generally, he most excelled at self-promotion. To see an engineer from the project answering -- in detail -- questions about it simply floors me. Perhaps Dean has reached the stage where he's willing to let others have a shot at the limelight? Whatever the reason -- congrats to the team for their hard work, and to Dean for giving them the opportunity to pursue it! My ex-boss actually ran the team for about a year, before he decided to leave for other pastures, but I'm sure that those who are still there are exceptional engineers, and should be proud of their hard work. Kudos all around.
How much will it cost? Six million dollars perhaps?
Gotta love it!
Luke only lost his hand
to develop a prosthetic arm for wounded warriors
The word for combat military service personnel is "soldiers". "Warriors" is clumsy propaganda, and should not be used in any serious context.
From an engineeing standpoint, Segway is pretty cool.
From a societal one, it is a worthless consumer item.
That's where I have been having personal issues lately - all engineering jobs are for creating worthless consumer crap; like the Segway.
Now, creating artificial limbs is a worthy endeavor but I would have a real problem if the company that manufactured them was making an obscence profit. Keeping your doors open and even making a 45% operating margin is one thing and understandable, but some of these fuckers are making hundreds of percentage points just because they can - and enriching no one but the CEOs.
Imagine one amputee (or even an able handed person) controlling hundreds or thousands of these to assemble things in a follow-my-lead manner. Computer vision based verification could compare the state of each of the things or 'gizmo' being assembled, with the 'master gizmo' the human is interactively building. In case of mismatch, gizmos with problems could be put away to sort out later.
...does the FDA have to approve a non-implanted prosthetic? Why are prosthetics so expensive?
to develop a prosthetic arm for wounded warriors more advanced than those...
So, no love for those who ride the short bus...??
[quote]Through trials by DEKA and the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, the Arm has been used by dozens of amputees for a total of many thousands of hours. [/quote]
So... They've only been using them for a couple of weeks.
Maybe it's just me... but that arm seems to be close enough to lifelike that it looks a kind of creepy..
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
oh, NVM.
government MUST protect the big businesses that climb into bed with it. Why would ANY company give campaign money to politicians who want to increase the power of the FDA over businesses if there was no benefit to that company for doing it? If companies already in the market and with already approved products support the high hurdles to entry, then they benefit greatly from reduce innovation and reduced competition and artificially-inflated prices for their products.
Requiring FDA approval for implanted devices and drugs MIGHT be justified and MIGHT be a good thing, but there is NO legitimate reason for the FDA to be involved with things like hearing aids and (non-implanted) prosthetics. Note: although generations of Americans have been propagandized into thinking they need a government agency to protect them on medical matters, there are free-market alternatives that work very well. Ever notice you do not need a government agency overseeing the electrical devices in your home? Most products voluntarily go to the non-government "Underwriter's Laboratory" to get tested and then marked with the ubiquitous "UL" seal, which we all recognize. UL is arguably a superior standard and system than government would implement; they have the right to perform unannounced spot-checks of vendors' production lines (as part of their agreements with product makers), and do so more-often than government regulators likely would. UL also lacks the inherent conflicts of interest that government has when it writes and enforces the laws and regulations, and certifies products and services and then engages in open-ended fund-raising and political campaigns with lots of winks and nudges. A similar free-market medical certification institution (to UL) could be created for drugs and implantable devices, and as with UL, members of the public could freely choose to buy or not buy items based on that certification (UL has no ability to use force on anybody)
You are figuratively shocked. You are literally surprised.
Unless your prosthetic limb has an electrical malfunction, or your amputation is causing catastrophic blood loss. In which case, I withdraw my objection and suggest an ambulance.
Mainly because no matter how cool the prosthetic is, if you are minus a limb you still have a self-esteem blow that you don't want people thinking about your loss.
Despite it being the year 2014, humans are still largely the same group-think apes from 2000 years ago that will define you by how you are different from the other apes. And it might not even be "largely", it might even be "completely" even if the better behaved humans keep those thoughts to themselves.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Can you wipe your ass with it?
I am your father!
Next time you look at the amazing tech demos one of the many goverment funded prothetic limb manufacturers produces make a note to have a look at how many isolated movments they can do at the same time. They will normally be only able to do a few - mostly due to the fact that there is no way to sense that a person wants to say both abduct their shoudler, flex their elbow, extend their wrist and oppose their thumb and 2nd digit. With the loss of the limb is the loss of the terminal nerve connections. In my knowlege there is some reaserch on controlling prothetic limbs by attemptning to reattach the periphial nerve to more proximal muscle so that one can sense or by directly communicating with the brain - as far as I know however these are still very much in their infancy. In addition, reciving feedback on pressure and temperature is also very challanging.
IMHO we will continue to have the problem that all single upper limb amputees will prefer to forgo their limb, as it is more cumbersome than learning to use the uninjured side, untill we solve the problem with how to communicate with the technology.
TLDR: Buliding a robotic arm with 10 degrees of freedom is much easier than trying to interface it with the human mind.
I heard it had a lukewarm reception.