Friday, November 29, 2013

Bionics' Life-Changing Potential

A subject very near and dear to my heart, as it was a brief video of Dean Kamen’s bionic “Luke Arm” that started me down the path of robotics and automation engineering. Bionics is still a budding field, and it may be a while before anything truly substantial makes its way to public use, but should it come to fruition, it has the potential to improve the quality of life of very many people.
While once the simple dream of science fiction, robotic replacement limbs are slowly but surely becoming a reality, thanks to some rapid advancements the field of robotics. It’s no easy task trying to fit the components necessary to replicated human movement into the size of a human arm or leg, without being too overbearing on the user. I remember the Luke Arm had to use some flexible circuits in order to fit in its self-contained restrictions, something that, if not entirely new, then was still very early in its use.
For a person who has lost one or more limbs, the goal here is to recreate the functionality they once had. At present, many of the more common bionic prostheses can at least open and close the hand and provide some basic functionality. There currently is much interest in trying to use the user’s own nerve endings from the point of amputation to control the prostheses. In theory, the nerve impulses could be read by the tech inside the prosthesis and used to control it, in a way not dissimilar to how we control our limbs normally. At present, “Scientists at the RIC have developed a procedure, targeted muscle reinnervation (TMI), which reassigns nerves that controlled arms and hands to pectoral muscles.
After surgery, patients are fitted with a prosthetic arm and are given therapy to strengthen their core muscles and training on how to use the arms. Once these nerves are reassigned, people with upper arm amputations are able control their prosthetic devices by merely thinking about the action they want to perform.”
Not too long ago, I believe, there was a story about a woman who was fully paralyzed who learned to control a robotic arm with only her mind. A probe, surgically inserted into her brain, could read her nerve impulses and send the info the arm, effectively allowing her to control it.
A number of problems do exist at present, of course; a couple of hurdles to overcome yet. Nerve impulse reading is not easy and nor is it always accurate. The surgery undergone for the brain probe provides a better read than nerve endings, but it involves invasive cranial surgery and the brain’s immune defenses could negate or block the probe in only a few months. Additionally, the cost of creating these devices is very high. Bionic prosthetics very likely will not be cost effective for many many years, until the components involved drop significantly in price. It will help drastically improve many people’s lives, both now and countless others in the future. But even that said, funding can be very hard to come by.

It’s still a technology that needs development before it gets anywhere close to wider use, but advances and research now can lead to something substantial and possibly life-changing for millions of people. Cyborgs of science fiction may not be too far. 

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