Got my January issue of IEEE Spectrum – all about the work of members of IEEE. The cover picture featured this arm – was that ever a shocker. Work is going on to make new prosthetic arms that will allow the user/wearer to touch, feel and control with their own nervous system! Reading about the work gives new meaning to “nanotechnology.”
This issue of Spectrum was about the “Winner and Loser Technologies of 2009”.
The article begins by telling of an engineer who is playing “air guitar hero” (take off on “Guitar Hero”) without a guitar! “More to the point, he is playing without his right hand, having lost it in Iraq in 2005.” He quits only after beating the high score of another engineer who just happens to have two hands.
The winner had controlled the muscles in his forearm, and the electrical impulses had been wired into a sort of “Wii-like” device. This is all part of research to provide better, more realistic artifical limbs to people who have lost theirs and is all part of a U.S. Government program for veterans, but the reward will be to all amputees.
Sally Adee, writer of the article says that it is much more difficult to create artifical arm/hand combinations than artificial legs. “Legs require only 4 degrees of freedom, where an arm and hand combination needs about 22 degrees of freedom plus the ability to feel heat, texture and force.”
If you can get to your library and check out the issue, I would highly recommend it. It is not a science article, and talks in non-techie terms.
