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After a Year of Secret Field-Testing, Brain-Controlled Bionic Legs Are Here
An anonymous reader writes: Today, an Icelandic prosthetic-maker announced that two amputees have been testing brain-controlled bionic legs for over a year. The devices respond to impulses in the subjects' residual limbs, via sensors that were implanted in simple, 15-minute-long procedures. "When the electrical impulse from his brain reaches the base of his leg, a pair of sensors embedded in his muscle tissue connect the neural dots, and wirelessly transmit that signal to the Proprio Foot. Since the command reaches the foot before the wearer's residual muscles actually contract, there's no unnatural lag between intention and action." This is a huge step forward (sorry) for this class of bionics. It may seem like a solved problem based on reports and videos from laboratories, but it's never been exposed to real world use and everyday wear and tear like this.
I wonder how far technology would have to advance and how long it might be before people actually choose to have a limb or limbs removed specifically so that they can be replaced with something more powerful or capable? 20 years? 100 years? Or would natural human aversion to losing body parts prevent this?
Crack open a Ripley's Believe It Or Not and look at all the freaks with tattoos and piercings all over their bodies. One guy was tattooed green EVERYWHERE and had his teeth sharpened so he could be "the lizardman". He cut his own tongue down the middle so it was "forked" too. There are lots of others.
Never underestimate how many crazy freaky people there are for whom there are no such natural aversions. Even today we have a class of mental illness of people who *want* to be amputees, not because they have any plans for cool prosthetics but because they want to be amputees. Some people some where will do this on purpose, it defintely will happen.
Well, they're already opting to have damaged natural joints like hips and knees replaced. That's a case of upgrading from natural to artificial to gain function. As the performance of artificial limbs increase, it might become an increasingly commonplace treatment for older people, just like knee or hip replacement.
If we project that trend forward for twenty or thirty years I wouldn't be surprised at all to see artificial legs that outperform natural legs for the purposes of walking or even running. But I don't think people with normal abilities will be trading in their limbs just to be able walk a little longer, run a little faster, or carry more weight. That won't happen until the replacement is subjectively indistinguishable from the real thing; until you can feel the grass under your toes.
I'm comfortable predicting locomotion parity in the next fifty years, but I wouldn't care to speculate on when we'll see sensory parity.
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